


Harrowing of Hell

by Suvroc (cuteandillusion)



Series: Harrowing of Hell [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Blasphemy, Christianity, Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Limbo, M/M, Physical Abuse, Poetry, Torture, but like, it's hell so what do you expect?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23147488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuteandillusion/pseuds/Suvroc
Summary: Post-Nonpocalypse, Crowley and Aziraphale are finding their new place in the world, mostly by planning a winery-tour-heavy holiday through Europe. That all falls apart when Crowley is dragged back to hell in what may be a personal vendetta, but not before he warns Aziraphale to seek safety. But we all know Aziraphale was never one to just follow orders.Or - Aziraphale wonders if he's still an angel, Crowley has to face some demons from his past (literally), and it turns out limbo / purgatory is a real place (with a lot of cats).
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Harrowing of Hell [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586740
Comments: 81
Kudos: 90





	1. Where, astoundingly, beautifully, deliciously, nothing happens

**Author's Note:**

> Ho-boy. Here we go. 
> 
> Sort of a payback fic – one where Aziraphale has to say the equivalent of “wherever you are, I’ll come to you.” (“Wherever he is, I will go to him.”)
> 
> Things start out purposefully sweet, but will swing into dangerously disturbing territory (ahem. HELL) later on. You may read this as a stand-alone, but feel free to read "Draw Me O'er Your Burning Heart" - my 'bus stop fic', and the first part of this series - if you wish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Click here to see a rendition of **Aziraphale and Crowley in France** \- specifically, on the balcony of Pavilion Henri IV in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. This image is part of the [Travel around the world with Ineffable husbands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23184796/chapters/55496911?fbclid=IwAR2fl11XPG-1INQUZlNZJUFI1cYxiwOeWUNcVQJ7xdgyBOH5oEQrEuDu6Ek) project by Patolozka, which honestly is the sweetest think I've ever seen. 
> 
> \---

\--

_“Let me be no nearer_  
_In death's dream kingdom_  
_Let me also wear_  
_Such deliberate disguises_  
_Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves_  
_In a field_  
_Behaving as the wind behaves_  
_No nearer -_  
_Not that final meeting_  
_In the twilight kingdom”_

TS Eliot – the Hollow Men

_“Don't wish it away -_  
_Don't look at it like it's forever._  
_Between you and me, I could honestly say,_  
_That things can only get better._

_And while I'm away,_  
_Dust out the demons inside_  
_And it won't be long before you and me run_  
_To the place in our hearts where we hide“_

Elton John - I guess that’s why they call it the blues

\---

It couldn’t last forever.

They knew it.

But, lighthearted and wonderful, it felt like it could.

Reality be damned.

It had been, what… a week? A month? …since the end of the world was averted. Since then, so much had happened between one certain angel, and one specific demon it was hard to even keep track.

It had started, as far as Aziraphale could recall, on the bus the night they returned from the airfield. For reasons perhaps he would never be completely sure of (an epiphany? a momentary lapse in judgement? a mistake?), he had taken Crowley’s hand. He had known for ages what they had meant to each other as, well, business partners. As he reflected back, he could now see how hard the demon had worked to convince him that working together was always for the best. For the longest while he had believed it was possible he was being tempted, and that he had to keep his guard up, lest he be corrupted by the evil wiles of his hereditary enemy. 

How thick he’d been.

It had been Crowley’s idea, after they survived heaven and hell’s assassination attempts, and after they spent a memorable night in the bookshop, to take a trip. _Get out of Dodge_ , is what he had said, meaning leave London. Out of England. Supposedly to restock Aziraphale’s wine cellar.

“Eleven years and one averted apocalypse later has left you woefully unprepared, alcohol-ly speaking, to have me as a visitor,” he’d smirked the next morning, after they spent the night sprawled and clutching each other on Aziraphale’s sofa. “And you’re right about keeping a low profile and not working miracles for a bit, so we’re going to have to do it the hard way.”

“You mean walk down to Sainsbury’s?”

“I mean, we need to get you a passport.”

And so had begun the Preparations – getting Aziraphale legitimate human documentation. He wasn’t sure how Crowley achieved all that he did without a tiny miracle or two, but he seemed confident. Not that there wasn’t the odd hiccup or two. 

“You need a name, Angel. One that doesn’t draw attention, so your true name is right out.”

“Really now. I’ve used this name in the past.”

“With ethereal help no doubt.” Well. He couldn’t argue with that. “How about Arnold. Good old Arnie?”

Aziraphale pulled a face.

“No? What else we got? Alexander?” He tilted his head. “No, you don’t look like him.”

“Please. Is this absolutely necessary?” he asked, feeling quite put on the spot for not ever actually deciding on a human name in the past.

“Albert. Could call you Al?”

Aziraphale stood and began pacing. “Do we need to do this right now? Couldn’t I have some time to think?”

“You’ve only had since the beginning of human history. And really, it’s no big a deal. We just need something for the paperwork,” he said and shook his smartphone at him, as if to indicate that paper now consist of electronic bits and bobs.

“What about… what if I just say the A is for Anthony.”

Crowley’s face contorted, eventually landing in a lopsided barely-grin. “Taking my name already, are you?”

“Well,” he said nervously. Why was he nervous? “Sharing it.”

“Not that I mind,” Crowley said, his tone mellow, “’Cuz I don’t. It just might cause a bit of confusion is my only concern. Maybe, I don’t know, something bookish?”

“Bookish?”

“An author or something?” He gestured around the shop.

“Ah,” Aziraphale’s eyes darted about. Nearest where he was standing was the area he kept the childrens’ and historically young persons’ books. He let his fingers touch the spines of T.H. White’s original series of novels – Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood…. four books which were eventually published together as The Once and Future King. For a moment he considered “Arthur,” but quickly dismissed it. Having served on the court, and in direct opposition of the infamous Black Knight (who now lounged amicably nearby, tapping digits into the GOV.UK website for him), that name might be a bit too weighty to carry. He did not want to appear to be putting on airs.

Browsing up a few shelves, his eyes landed upon an American novel he knew quite well. It was as pure and true a construction of humankind as any other book in his shop – filled with heroism and strength, sadness and confusion, and, in the current time, quite prone to cause debate as to its historical place and problematic depictions of the past. It was everything the written word was created to be. 

“Atticus,” he said.

“Atticus?”

“It means, _From Athens_. More or less.”

“Well yes, I know that. Still a little odd.” Crowley took a breath. “Atticus Fell.” 

And so it was done. They determined that the “Z” was just a “Z” really (although Crowley did put up a good fight trying to get him to say it stood for “Zaphod”). 

The Preparations were a bit of a mortifying ordeal. There were more distastefully personal questions, and he had to submit a photo of himself (in which he felt he looked terribly uncomfortable). And then, one day, Crowley slunk off on his own, only to return a number of hours later, silhouetted in the doorway.

“We got it,” he said, holding up a slim package.

_We._

“The identification papers?” Aziraphale asked, rising. They opened the package together and laid the passport out on the desk. It was quite odd to see his new name written right there in black and white next to his photograph. “That picture is frightful really.”

“It doesn’t matter. This is the first step. Now you can go wherever you wish. Paris. Yaminashi. Amyntaio.” Aziraphale found himself smiling through his anxiety, recalling memories of each place mentioned. Before the trek to Tadfield, it had been quite a long while since he had traveled farther than down the street to the chemist. “Put it someplace safe. I got something else for you.” Crowley reached into his pocket and withdrew a small black rectangle. Aziraphale’s eyes grew wide, angst returning full force, and then some.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“All part of the Preparations! I’m not going anywhere without a way to get a hold of you.”

“But you’ll be with me!”

“Not every second,” he huffed. “I have it all set up,” he said, setting the cellphone down next to the passport. “It’s very simple, but I need to show you.”

Aziraphale eyed the cellphone like it was a bomb about to go off. His raised his eyes to Crowley’s sunglasses with a resigned sigh.

“Come on. It’s not so bad,” Crowley drawled, leaning in on his elbows and taking out his own phone. “We'll practice,”

 _We again._ Aziraphale had to say something. The tone of the demon’s voice demanded it; the tenderness, it struck him like a blow.

“Why are you being so patient with me?” he asked.

Crowley tilted his head. Leveled his covered eyes at him.

There was a word that didn't pass between them. A strong, powerful, heavy word that they felt, but had never spoken to each other. About each other. It carried too much baggage. They had taken to expressing it through actions. It felt safer. Crowley set down his own phone and made a beckoning motion with his finger. Aziraphale warily presented his hand and Crowley took it. (Touches were getting more and more frequent as well. Hand-touches, hand holding, a careful stroke of the pad of one’s thumb to the tendons on the back of the other's hand. All things they had purposely avoided, unless cultural norms dictated otherwise, throughout the millennia.)

“I just want you to know, “ Crowley said calmly -- gently, “that inside... I am screaming. You are a pain in the arse, and I'm mostly doing this for the wine.” Aziraphale was pretty sure he winked behind those dark glasses. “Mostly.”

“You are awful,” the Angel said fondly.

“Good. Don't forget it.” He let go and picked up Aziraphale's phone. “Here, let's just play with it for a bit. Maybe we can find a way to get you to like it.” He slid his thin fingertip around the screen.

“I am never going to be able to...”

“Amazon,” He handed the phone back. “They have just about every book you could imagine. Just touch this part,” he indicated, “and the keyboard will pop up and you can type in whatever you want to look for. Then touch the little magnifying glass.”

“Did I not hear though, that this Amazon was displacing independent bookshops?” he said, turning as Crowley walked past him, wandering over to the couch he had more or less made his own.

“Oh Antichrist, that was ages ago. Way past that. Walmart of the internet now. Don't worry.”

He looked skeptical but did as he was told. After a few aggravating bumps to the screen, he set the phone down and touch-typed his way through. “How do I capitalize?”

“It really doesn't matter,” Crowley said, but told him anyhow. Once the results popped up, Crowley shared how a simple brush of the fingertip sent the whole screen flying upwards. “It's called scrolling.”

“Really now?”

“Just mess with it a bit.”

Aziraphale was far from captivated by what he was looking at. Everything was so small and crowded. He tentatively pressed his finger to the screen and swiped at it. The display reacted and raced upwards.

“And people actually like this device? Hard to imagine.”

“Oh they love them. You have no idea.”

“I certainly do not.”

“What did you search for? What did you type in?”

“'John D. Maccerone', second Earl of Salden. He published a version of Edlwitche's Fourth Centurey Bible. I’ve only ever seen the second printing which removed almost all of the errors.”

“Anything show up?”

Aziraphale looked down at the screen and was taken aback. “Why look!” He read the blurb out loud. “Eldwitche's Fourth Century Bible compendium. This publication contains all the previously regarded “first folios” of the long-lost version of the seminal religious book. Complied in 1844 by John D Maccerone, it is considered the definitive exploration of the missing and mishandled books.”

“You want it?” Crowley asked.

“Well of course I want it.”

“So buy it.”

“I've been trying to for over 400 years you old silly.”

Crowley groaned and pointed, “see what that button says? You tap it and I'll show you how to buy it.”

“I can buy John D. Maccerone books with this?”

“You can buy a 5-gallon bucket of macaroni and cheese if you'd like.”*

Aziraphale set the phone down and took a moment. He opened a tin of biscuits he kept nearby for just such emergencies. “This is a bit overwhelming.”

Crowley picked up the discarded phone and began tapping at it. “Remember that time in _Saint-Germain-en-Laye***_?”

Aziraphale felt his face brighten. “The church and the sour grapes, of course I remember!” He sat back a moment, munching a biscuit thoughtfully. “Was that.. that wasn't...”

“Think so,” Crowley nodded, his eyes focused on the phone.

“That was the first time we tried doing each other's jobs, if I recall.”

“Well, close to it yeah, but I don't think you really considered it a job back then. It was quite an ordeal to get you to agree to it.”

The process of reminiscing was not one that was new to them, but the act of remembering things warmly, simply for the fact of remembering, was. Nostalgia is not inbuilt in angels. A bit over the top really, when you had six millennia of memories to tap into. “Let me see now. I was to appear to the local pastor and inspire him to build the church.”

“And I was there to wither the vineyards of a certain family, send them spiraling into misery and provoking them to a life of crime.”

“Yes! Oh my, and instead you tempted me to partake of some of that wine and convinced me that in the long run, it really would be more of a blessing if I inspired the family start a boisterous business as opposed to entering the criminal underworld.”

“I didn't tempt you!” Crowley looked up. He always was so sensitive about that word, but Aziraphale knew it was true. “You went into that knowing full well how good that wine would be!”

“You didn't?”

“No of course not! I never.” He leaned over and plucked a gingersnap from the tin. “Here, try one of these.” 

Aziraphale held his hand out and Crowley placed the sweet very purposefully in the divot at the center of his palm. “ _Nuts lie in thy path for stones, And thy feast-day macaroons turn to daily rations._ ”**

Aziraphale took the biscuit and bit into it, reflecting on the recitation. “Browning.” He nibbled daintily around the edge. “Mmmm. Well, anyways. Why do you bring it up?”

Crowley spun the phone around. “Let's go back.”

Aziraphale scrutinized the screen. “What about my Bible compendium?”

“Your book is on its way.” He pointed. “What do you think?”

On the small screen there was a map of the France. “Well surely! I haven’t been there in ages.” 

“Alright. Bought you a book. Decided on a trip. You ready to practice calling me on this?”

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * [92 SERVINGS](https://www.amazon.com/Augason-Farms-Dinner-Emergency-Supply/dp/B00GDGGR4S/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=lunch+and+dinner+emergency+food+supply&qid=1584229143&sr=8-2)
> 
> ** [Crowley proving he is still a right bastard.](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43726/to-flush-my-dog)
> 
> *** Saint-Germain-en-Laye really was founded in 1020, "somewhere around" the same year the Arrangement began. 
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	2. When they are having a lovely vacation (until it all goes pearshaped)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Use of Crowley's dead name

Aziraphale didn’t think he’d like travel in the 21st century. Ever since he had set up the bookshop, London had been his home, and he rarely strayed far. But, he had a wine cellar to refill, a demon for a travel agent, and there was all the time in the world now, a realization that made speed and hiding their Arrangement no longer the main necessities to getting things done.

They were destined to board a train at London St Pancras, and Aziraphale found he still absolutely adored travel by rail. He had packed a pair of suitcases he bought specifically for the aesthetics back in the 1960s, one of which was stuffed completely with books he planned to read along the way. He trailed Crowley as he strode through the station, the demon’s black leather “smart luggage” following behind him as well like an obedient dog. The glass covered ceiling perfused the station with light, and they bantered good-naturedly and practiced their French while they waited patiently for their train to arrive. 

Crowley had booked them to the Pavilion Henri IV, built upon the old Château Neuf, in one of the Deluxe rooms with a view. “I am hoping the doors to the terrace open. Or that we can somehow get outside from the rooms,” he said, flipping idly through a brochure. 

“How many days will we be there?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Mmmm. Long as you like. Then Portugal. Spain. Jaunt to Italy. Then off to Greece. That’s it.” He turned to face the angel. The glasses he had chosen to wear were not the ones with the covered sides he had been wearing for the past number of years, but ones that looked to have frames made of pearwood and were quite beautiful to behold. 

Crowley started listing wineries and vintages and Aziraphale found himself entranced. The station seemed to fall away, the crowds of personage becoming a faint background hum as Crowley continued to prattle on about nothing. This was really happening. They were really going off. Together.

“I really want to see that old whatsyacallit in Naoussa, see if it stayed as dark as I meant it to.”

“Xinomavro,” Aziraphale supplied the name of the Greek wine in question with barely a trip of the tongue. “Quite appropriate for you. Acid black.”

“Well you know, if it wasn’t for me we’d all be still drinking that sweet fortified stuff. Ug.” 

The train approached, all wind and bustle. With a slide of doors it deposited it’s bounty of individuals to the platform, and he and Crowley entered and found their seat, one next to each other, Crowley being kind enough to allow Aziraphale the window. 

Time passed quickly. As they raced along, they received a light meal which Crowley waved off, but Aziraphale found most delightful. Some buttery pastries and berries, along with a champagne cocktail. During the number of minutes under the channel tunnel, Aziraphale watched, mesmerized at what the humans had accomplished. Crowley “rested his eyes” most of the journey, although only after a quick demonic jaunt to switch all the coffee and tea to decaf. “Can’t have everyone awake if I’m napping,” he groused, settling back into his seat. 

Before he knew it, and without even a second through to the books resting patiently in his carry-along, they arrived in Paris. Along with other weary (and uncomfortably under-caffeinated) travelers, students, and businesspersons, they wandered into the city to have a look about. They walked the old grey streets and discussed how much had changed. It was still beautiful, but it was so different. A lot less head chopping for a start.

That same day they went on out to the suburbs to reach Saint-Germain-en-Laye and toured the hills overlooking the Seine, rolling and golden and ever so beautiful. Above them, the sky looked silky somehow. The clouds and even the height contrasted with the remembered layers of England’s grey.

Although the vineyard they once had a hand in creating was long gone, there was plenty more to explore and investigate. Eventually of course they found a winery, but compared to what they were used to, the vintage, though delectable, was young. Newborn almost. 

“Oh my,” Aziraphale stated, running his tongue over the roof of his mouth in experience of the clean expression of the wine. He wrinkled his nose and peered into the glass as if he expected to see his fortune told in tannins.

Crowley’s reaction was more visceral: he made a “bleh,” noise and let the wine unceremoniously dump out of his mouth and back into the glass.*

Aziraphale giggled, “not what you expected?”

“Oh it’s like mead, only worse if that were possible.”

They stalked around the shops until they found an actual wine shop that dated back to the 1800s that had some incredibly old and incredibly expensive bottles for sale, and they bought them out of stock to the point the proprietor allowed. Crowley worked out the details to have it delivered back to the bookshop when they were there to receive it. 

It had been a long day, but one soaked in enjoyment. Back at the hotel, later that night, they attended dinner at the restaurant. A salad bursting with the freshest produce of the season to begin, followed by sole meunière, the fillet so large it all but reached the sides of the plate. A drizzle of roast lemon and butter and a side of the famously delicate puffed pommes soufflée** scented the air with savory, salty goodness. Aziraphale enjoyed every scrap of it.

“Oh the fish is so tender, it’s delightful! Mm. And I’ve always said that capers bring such majesty to a dish, don’t they?”

Crowley made a ‘tsk’ noise, a tiny curve to the corner of his mouth as he swirled the wine in his glass. 

After dinner, it turned out the wide sweeping terrace was as accessible as they had hoped for. The lights were dim, the late summer sky wearing a coat of stars. They reclined in their chairs, a small metal table between them set with two glasses and a bottle of Bénédictine. 

Crowley took his hand.

“Are you relaxed, darling?” Aziraphale asked, a bit dreamy from travel and wine and good food. 

Crowley let his thumb trace idly over the soft space between his fingers. “hm.” He gazed out into the darkness. “I think so.” 

Aziraphale wondered. Although he could sense a definite lowering of stress in the air around him, Crowley’s stance and demeanor were still very much the same as always. The cords of his neck stood out, etched in twilight glow. His still form appearing ready to uncoil at the first sign of threat. 

The slow movement of his thumb was the one thing to belie the status quo. 

“Tell me.”

“This feels right. I like it here. We should stay here.”

“We are staying here,” Aziraphale said, smiling.

“Perfect.”

A warm breeze ruffled the leaves of ivy winding its way over the terrace wall. A strange ripple moved across Crowley's skin, but he didn't seem to pay it any mind. The demon had tilted his head up wistfully. “I want to fly up there,” he said, more, it seemed, to himself. Aziraphale couldn’t draw his gaze from him.

“You should, you know.”

Crowley shook his head, “naw. Not really.” Then. “Maybe someday. Happy right here.”

Aziraphale felt it too. The pull of the heavens. The ache of his wings to soar. _Maybe someday,_ he thought, and reached over to pour himself a glass of the liquor. 

He felt it as soon as he touched the bottle. It was like an electric shock, and he reacted viscerally to the sharp burning sensation that suddenly shot up his arm. 

“AHHG!” he yelled, the fierce bolt of pain making him recoil. 

Crowley reacted in an instant, leaping up and flinging himself back out of the chair. 

“Aziraphale!” he called and reached for him.

The bottle erupted in a column of fire, dividing the two of them. Aziraphale hurriedly stood and backed away from the searing heat. 

_No!_ He thought. _Not now!_ He felt desperately for his weapon, the blade he kept in the same place as his wings, but his sword hand was useless, cauterized by the occult flame.

The column of flame melted the table which pooled like lava between them. Standing in the center was a demon Aziraphale had never seen before. 

“Ssss Sonneillon,” Crowley, arms spread and standing in a partial crouch, hissed out. “They aren’t fucking around this time, eh?” 

The demon before them bowed deeply. “Bit of a flash entrance, I know, but I thought you’d get a kick out of it, Crawley.”

“Crowley, actually. Anthony J. if you please.”

“Ahahahah,” the laugh was real, boisterous, and one of the cruelest thing Aziraphale had ever heard. “I don’t think you are in the position to make any sort of demands right now. Plus, I have it on the authority of a certain Duke of Hell that I should use your Real Name.” 

The melted remains of the iron table shimmered with rainbow iridescence and began to move like magma again. Before the full form was even complete, Crowley was moaning a low moan which Aziraphale read as both, _“oh shit,”_ and _“we’re fucked”_.

The bold shape of a demon solidified, all wrapped in buttery smooth leather. The lizard-type shape perched upon his head was undulating orange and red.

“I should think I would like more than just a word with you this time.” He turned his full crimson-eyed glare upon the angel, “…and your man… Aziraphale, isn’t it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * I know it is tea in the original usage ([Human Incarnate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19170238/chapters/45567355) by nikkiRA), but I pictured Crowley like [this image](https://dotstronaut.tumblr.com/post/188597036108/crowley-brought-his-cup-to-his-lips-and-spat-the) by dotstronaut as he let the wine pour out of his mouth.  
> ** On 24 August 1837, Collinet, the chef at the Pavillon Henri IV accidentally came up with a recipe for pommes soufflées during the inauguration of the Paris-Saint-Germain-en-Laye railway line. You can find [the recipe here](https://www.pavillonhenri4.fr/media/original/56f00f9a646d8/pommes-soufflees.pdf) (in French).
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	3. In which we go back to the War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: description of battle

> To talk of the War, one must tell the story of the Beginning. When twenty million angels were sung into being on the voice of God. They knew very little else other than what they had been created for and Who they had been created by. In that existence (for time was not yet invented to refer to), there was no happiness per se, nor other emotion. There were tasks. There were duties. There was adoration and there was devotion, and there was not yet light.  
>    
>  As existence continued, things became real. Air and sky and ash and stone. Ice and dust and fire. Clouds. Airy things. Space. Stars. Particles tiny, knitted together with an incomprehensible power to make things unfathomably large and extraordinarily distant.  
>    
>  The angels looked upon these with a million eyes.  
>    
>  One of them spun, with the primordial ichor of melted iron, a round dot of pale yellow.* To it the angel, who did not yet have a name, teased volcanoes to spew new gas and new matter, sulfur and acid, hot in the cold ice of nameless space.  
>    
>  The cry of this angel was to **behold behold behold** , in fire amongst the ice. **Behold what is possible!** As other angels stood fast in ranks and rows awaiting in perpetuity unknown assignments under the aegis of their Lord, the nameless one’s eyes glowed with the glory of possibility.  
>    
>  Other choirs of angels joined in the song, circling ‘round in rings, reaching to adore their Creator. **Behold what You have allowed us to do!**  
>    
>  And the Creator did look. And was moved, possibly even inspired, to take more molten iron, as within the need to create continued, but instead of yellow did make it to become a pale blue. And to spin, but to spin the opposite direction, and to add not acid and sulfur, but oxygen and dry air to envelope the newly formed planet not with fire, but water and dew and the humid alchemy that would produce life.  
>    
>  And all the other angels sang **holy holy holy! This song is to worship the sacredness of all our Lord creates!**  
>    
>  Then, and only then, God said, “Let there be light.” And above the horizon of the Earth, far distant, but glowing within the sky, before even the Sun or the Moon were brought to being, before the stars were named, God set the pale yellow dot.** And on the morning of the first day, the angel was given his name, and it was Light-bringer. Morning-star. Lucifer.  
>    
>  And Lucifer smiled.  
>    
>  As the creation of the World continued, God made the creatures and the plants. The green things, ivy and berry bushes and kelp and trees, took the cool blue water and set it to supply everything with life-giving breath. The birds reflected the wings of the angels and were set about in the sky to bring beauty and song. The animals crawled and galloped and padded across the newly-formed land and God’s eyes sparkled with admiration at each and every one of them. 

And then, on the sixth day, well… God made kind of a funny decision.

“What do you think of that human thing?” one of the starmakers asked after a long day of working in one of the dark nebulae. A gathering of them sat on the edge of a cloud, peering down at the Earth and the creatures now roaming its surface. “Do you really think that’s what the Creator looks like? Kind of like a plucked ostrich?”  
  
Another angel seated nearby, ruddy and cunning with gold streaks running through her hair, snorted. “Have you seen the way She dotes on it? It’s pathetic really.”  
  
The starmaker shrugged and snacked on a piece of day-old manna. Nearby, another angel, who was named Asphodelus, was laying on his belly, staring down at the Garden. The clouds were comfortable beneath him, and he was lazily watching fields of fluffy white blossoms drift to and fro. “I like the flower things. And some of those furry things.”  
  
“Hey, look, it’s Lucifer!” the ruddy one who had been named Tinerael shouted and waved as the Light-bringer strode into the area. A large contingent of followers surrounded him. That had happened slowly at first, but more quickly recently as the Creator had been distracted by Her work on the Earth. Wherever Lucifer stood, it seemed at least half the angels in the area looked to him for direction.  
  
Lucifer’s visual form as well seemed to have been changing as he added more and more angels to his group. After God displayed Her design for Man, Lucifer had shed a few of his wings, refined and etched his body to reflect that of the newly designed human. He didn’t respond to Tinerael’s call, instead talking quietly to some of the armed angels that followed close by him.  
  
“I heard,” Tinerael said to those around her, “Luc is planning to talk to God about some of our complaints.”  
  
“Oh yeah?” the starmaker said, setting aside the stale manna. “Like why we have to eat this mealy garbage and why we can’t get better wine?”  
  
The other angel nodded. “That, and why those new human things should be allowed to do whatever they want while we toil away.”  
  
“It’s not bad work.”  
  
“Couldn’t it be better though?” She stood. “Let’s go join him.”  
  
“Eh why not. I got nothing better going on. Hey Asphodelus, what say?”  
  
The angel shrugged carelessly but stayed put as the others went to join the throng.  
  
Asphodelus waved his hand down to the Garden, passing through space in the unconscious way ethereal beings moved, and let his fingers dangle near one of the “furry ones” as he called them. It had a t-shaped nose and little wiry-bits sticking out of its cheeks.  
  
“You’re a darling one you are,” he cooed, “what did that Adam fellow name you? Moggy? I don’t recall. You look like a Moggy.” The animal batted at his fingers with its paw and Asphodelus giggled. He looked around for something else to dangle before the creature for a bit of play and saw a spire-shaped flower. He snapped off a long stem and fluttered the white flowers in front of the animal, who immediately did an impressive cartwheel through the air, causing the angel to laugh with glee.  
  
Glee? Well that was new.  
  
He dipped the flower before the beast. Again the animal leaped up to try to grab it, completely unconcerned with where or when its limbs would reconnect with the earth. The joy he felt at the gentle interaction with this creature was so different from the holy praise he heaped upon the Creator, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.  
  
“To arms! To your posts!”  
  
Michael’s cry drew him back to the heavens with a jolt. Trumpets of the 15th holy cohort began to sound. He looked around and saw phalanx of angels tearing into position across the sky. As they passed overhead, their shadows darkened the area around him and made him shiver. The clouds sizzled with power, and he looked wildly about. The Principalities were already in their battle gear and lining up behind the Archangel who stood in full regalia, sword already drawn.  
  
He stood, still clutching the sprig from Eden, and tried to determine his best course of action. What was the threat? Who were they fighting? That had always been a question niggling at the back of his mind, though he tried not to think about it. He tried not to question. He knew many angels were created to fight, but they had been idle for so long. What else was there in the Universe besides them and those silly beings the Creator had put in the Garden? Certainly it wasn’t that.  
  
And then, with a gasp, he saw the first angel fall.  
  
On the tip of the blade of another.  
  
Michael’s war cry rang out, and existence would never be the same.  
  
Asphodelus flew.  
  
Flew without purpose, stupidly, mindlessly.  
  
There was no place an angel could hide from another angel. And to be honest, that was all he wanted to do. Hide. There was smoke now. And clanging swords and shields, wails and cries, the acrid smell of burning hair and feathers. Chaos filled him as it filled the heavens.  
  
The front line seemed right before him, blinding him with righteous flame. Twirling and diving, he dropped back to find footing on a cloud, backing away, ready to do just about anything to avoid the horrors that were becoming reality all around him.  
  
His back collided with something and he spun around to find himself face to face with a soldier. “What side!” the soldier shouted and raised his sword with a slightly panicked and desperate look. Asphodelus reacted automatically, raising both hands. The long-stemmed flower bobbed between them, a farcical reflection of the other angel’s blade.  
  
“I’m… I’m not on any side!” he stammered. Squeezing his eyes shut, he awaited his fate.  
  
From the darkness behind his eyelids, there was a roar, and a feeling of a mighty heat. A sound of 10 million throats screaming in shock and anger and boiling hate.  
  
And then, silence.  
  
Trembling, he opened one eye, then the other. Glancing about, he realized he was no longer in heaven. Then where? On Earth? It didn’t look quite like the Garden. He let his hands fall from his face, then, unable to find the power to stand any longer, he fell to his knees.  
  
He was all alone.  
  
Except….  
  
"Mrrrow?"  
  
One of the little furry ones came over to him. It bumped its head against his thigh, its fuzzy body rubbing along the side him. He reached out and stroked its fur. Once. Twice. A rumbling reverberated under his fingertips, and it took only a moment to realize the vibrations came from the little animal. It was soothing in a way that nothing else he could think of was. He stroked it again, and felt a little better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * [Venus](http://www.ajax.ehu.es/VEX/Venus.Earth/Venus.Earth.html): The Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old (Earth's crust has an average age of about 100 million years). The brightest natural object in the night sky (after the moon), Venus is similar in size and mass to Earth. It is however, the hottest planet in the solar system and rotates opposite the Earth (so the sun sets in the east and rises in the west). 
> 
> ** [According to the Book of Genesis](https://mybible.com/bibles/esv/books/gen/chapters/1), Earth was created, and first there was light (1:3) and then there was the morning of the first day (1:5) and later there was the sun and the moon (1:16). 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has decided to join me in following along with this fic! I promise we will get back to our boys in a moment. I just had to give some background for the [third representative on Earth](https://cheeseanonioncrisps.tumblr.com/post/190041330385/so-in-the-ark-scene-a-lot-of-people-spotted-the) before I moved on.
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	4. What a nightmare of a time.

It was all for naught. 

Everything he’d done. 

Everything he’d put in place. Blown to smithereens by a blast from the past. Two of them actually, with the promise of even more. 

Hell did not send rude notes. 

They sent the demon Sonneillon. 

He had one chance. Well, he, Crowley, had no chance at all. He was going back to Hell, no if ands or buts about it. He was, in fact, screwed. 

But he had to make one last desperate attempt to at least try to make sure his ultimate failure did not doom Aziraphale.

He snapped his fingers. 

The air zinged with the strange vibration of time, and his inner ear chimed as he simultaneously transported them back into their hotel room. He held Aziraphale by the shoulders as the angel blinked at him, startled, clutching his right hand to his chest. 

“We don’t have much time,” growled Crowley. “They’re not here for you, but I’ll bet Team Goody-Two-Shoes isn’t far behind.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began, but his words were swallowed by a crushing kiss as Crowley yanked him forward. It was frantic, hot and wet and much too brief. As the demon pulled back, Aziraphale let out a small, pained noise. 

“Go to Greece. Go right now. There is someone there I meant to introduce you to. I’ve been meaning to introduce you for, well, a really long time. The opportunity just never presented itself. Stay there, and if I can, I’ll come to you.” 

Aziraphale shook his head. “I won’t leave you,” he said desperately.

"Remember what you told me? There is nothing you can do right now. Save your energy." Gently, Crowley uncurled Aziraphale’s burnt hand from his chest. “You have to trust me.” Bowing his head, he kissed the center of his palm. The hellish wound flared with a transference of pain as Crowley healed it. “Little demonic miracle.”

Aziraphale flexed his fingers and let them rest upon Crowley’s cheek for only a moment. “Who am I….”

There was a shimmer to the air, and he heard the chime. They were too late. Something thin and red whipped around Crowley’s throat. With a final word, he shouted, “GO!”

Aziraphale stumbled back and snapped his fingers. His body (and, Crowley noticed with vague amusement, his luggage) winked out of existence. 

Crowley drew his hands up to the red thing coiling around his throat, knowing there was nothing he could do to prevent it. It was sticky and writhing and continued to wrap tighter and tighter. The thing smelled disgusting, like it had eaten (and then vomited) rotted meat, and it felt like cold, wet sewage. 

“Trying a bit of trickery? Hilarious, but you know better than that.” The voice of Sonneillon drew closer behind him as the two demons entered the hotel room. 

“Where’s the angel?” asked Ligur.

Crowley’s fingers tore at the muculent ligature which, as the Duke of Hell came around to face him, he realized was the tongue of the demon’s iguana-like familiar. Crowley struggled and made as if to speak, but the red thing around his neck had effectively cut off the air supply his corporeal form needed to survive, so he simply mouthed the words, _“fuck you.”_

“Never mind the angel. Tie him the rest of the way up.”

Ligur smiled a slimy rendition of a smile, and the thing upon his head unfurled even more of its ropy red tongue, wrapping over Crowley’s hands and wrists, down his forearms to his waist. It was all Crowley could do just to stay conscious, let alone escape his bindings. 

“Do you know what it feels like to be burned alive with holy water?” Ligur seethed. “Do you know what it feels like to have your eyes boiled out of your skull? Do you know what it feels like for your spine to melt and your bones to shatter and your guts to burst and explode?”

Sonneillon circled behind him. “Oh, he will. Thanks to our dear Antichrist resetting things, we were all called down from the promised battle, but it seems like the torment you wrecked upon Duke Ligur was reset as well. I must say, I am not quite sure how he ended up in the catacombs beneath Paris, but he did, in a crypt I had quite a good time desecrating.” 

Crowley’s head was growing muzzy. He thought back to the night after the averted Armageddon, to his admission to Aziraphale that he’d used the holy water to destroy a demon. Aziraphale had taken care of the mess that was left – something about entombing the remains. Apparently not well enough, he though grimly. 

“Let’s just say it was my ultimate pleasure to learn you were behind this, as it gives me the chance to not only fulfill my Satan-given duty to punish the deserved, but also, it will allow me to settle some scores with you I think are long over-due.” She came into full view, and the golden streaks of her hair where once the light of heaven had shone through now dripped with blood. “Wouldn’t you say, _former_ serpent of Eden?”

Crowley had no response. He’d blacked out.

-

Demons don’t dream.

Whoever had made that rule had forgotten to tell Crowley.

Crowley dreamed. He dreamed a lot. Along with the euphoric enjoyment of sleeping, of curling up under piles of heavy quilting or wriggling his way to the darkest dim corner of the ceiling for a quick snooze, he’d been first confounded, but then delighted to find out about dreams. It was like a movie he didn’t have to pay to see, written by his subconscious, most likely staring himself, and usually consisting of such a heretical jumble of symbolism it made him feel very cleaver to have come up with it without even thinking. 

The problem was the nightmares. 

The first time he had a nightmare he’d yelled at himself for allowing it. It wasn’t even something he could remember really, only the fact that he’d bolted upright from a dead sleep, expecting to have to defend himself from whatever threat had overwhelmed his fragile human form and made it sweat profusely and his chest to pound in a very uncomfortable way. But there was nothing. No threat. Just that pile of squishy stuff inside of his skull (this first nightmare was very early on before the advent of anatomy had given names to such things) making up weird convoluted pictures that for whatever reason made him feel ill-at-ease. 

The nightmares were few and far between at first. Luckily. He felt he was, for the most part, a fairly well-adjusted demon for the majority of his 6,000 years in a human body. Sure, there were tense moments, confusing relationships, confounding problems that had to be sorted out, but by in large, he felt he was pretty well equipped to do what he had to do to keep himself entertained, to say what he had to say to keep himself out of trouble, and to be fairly free to have a pretty relaxed time of things. 

He was, of course, lying to himself. 

This was especially true where Aziraphale was concerned. 

Aziraphale had been the cause of some of his greatest angst, but also had been a place he put his mind to help avoid the nightmares. Leading up to the Armageddon, there was never any other choice but to convince Aziraphale to play a role in raising the supposed Antichrist. He needed him nearby. For moral support. Not that Crowley ever would have admitted that. 

The worst part was that, after the Apocalypse was averted and they had survived by tricking their respective sides into letting them go, the nightmares had actually _increased_ , in both frequency and scope. This would have been utterly appalling if another thing had not increased exponentially at around the same time. 

He and the angel had begun sharing a bed.

He had not expected to adore the bed-sharing as much as he did. Never in a million billion years did he think he’d like bed sharing. It was even more surprising if he looked back to when he first not only discovered sleep, but found that he could get _really_ professional at it. He'd thought there was no way on Earth he wanted to share that time or experience with anyone else. He was hedonistic, after all, greedy. No way he’d share that feeling of peace and relaxing tranquility with anyone else.

Well, the end of the world can do funny things to a person. 

That was where it had started, of course. Like so much that had started changing. The first time Aziraphale had come to him at night and laid down next to him in a way that he'd dreamed of, but also not, was the night after Tadfield. He hadn't let himself realize how hungry he had been for that, but it became abundantly clear fairly quickly, the feeling was mutual.

Crowley had his schedule, and the more time they spent together post-crisis, the more chance Aziraphale had to come to understand that included Crowley becoming unconscious for around eight hours each day. At the end of each evening, as Crowley settled in to drowse on the bookshop sofa, Aziraphale seemed to gravitate to settling in to his chair to read nearby. This was all fine and good, but through a number of unspoken indications, Aziraphale had made to move closer and closer, from the chair, to the edge of the sofa, until Crowley had no choice but to tuck himself into Aziraphale's lap and keep him trapped until the dawn. 

He knew that with the self-imposed miracle-less lifestyle they'd adopted, staying up all hours was becoming a bit more tedious for the angel. And, due to the fact that neither of them actually had to do anything – miracle working, blessings, tempting, or falsifying paperwork for the bosses – the actual need to stay up was much reduced. And so one night, when Crowley began yawning and making preparations to return to his flat, Aziraphale simply asked, “would you mind if I join you?”

Crowley did not mind.

Aziraphale moved from lying above the covers to under them eventually. They hadn’t really talked about it. It had just sort of… happened. 

The first time Crowley awoke after having a particularly intense nightmare, they didn’t really talk about that either. 

Aziraphale seemed to know what to do, which probably had something to do with his angelic design. He touched him. He hushed him and held him close. Stroked his hair and his neck and his back. And eventually he fell back to sleep.

The recent nightmares had been emotional. Just as ambiguously threatening as ever at first, but eventually solidifying themselves into memories. 

He had nightmares about Michael. And he had nightmares about their respective bosses coming for Aziraphale first. And when he had these nightmares, he would shutter. And he would shake. And tremble. And Aziraphale was so kind. He would hold him. He would stroke his cheek and his lip and he would hold him close. 

"There is nothing you can do," he would murmur. "Right now, there is nothing you can do to fix this. Relax. Feel it. I am here. I am here for you." Aziraphale would stroke along his back, along his spine. Then, one time, he had asked quite tentatively, for Crowley to "release them." He hadn't known where the tension had been kept until that moment, when, with his eyes absolutely squeezed shut, he freed his wings. His long black feathers spreading, wings opening wide, he felt a rush of relaxation. Aziraphale was... so good at... what he was good at. Crowley was, almost always, able to return to slumber with the acknowledgment and the reassurance that things would be ok. 

Right now, Crowley was dreaming.

He was dreaming of himself long long ago. Of meeting eyes with someone in he rain. Pity ran through him as he assumed the person he was looking at was a human about to be drown with everyone else. But the man smiled broadly and waved, then turned around and went into a hut, and there was a very odd sense to the whole interaction.  
  
It wasn’t until he saw the being again and realized that he had not drowned, that he started to question if he really was a human. That, and the fact that thousands of years had passed.

-

Crowley opened his eyes. 

Around his neck hung a heavy metal collar. 

Sitting in a plush throne, not very far away, was Sonneillon. She took a bite out of what looked to be an Egg McMuffin. 

"Welcome back to hell."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	5. Why? (The greatest question ever asked of the universe... because no one wants to admit there is no answer.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OMG you guys. I'm so sorry. This ended up a monster, and I want to make sure you pay attention to the tags, 'cuz I didn't think I'd get here this soon.
> 
> CW: Torture.   
> EDIT! If you wish to skip these scenes, when you see the "-o-" scroll ahead until you see "-x-" and keep reading.  
> You will mostly be reading what Aziraphale experiences, but it should not detract from the storytelling.

Aziraphale landed with an unceremonious THUD on the soft yet merciless ground and lay there for a moment to collect himself. Gingerly, he held his hand up before his face and flexed it, the skin as pink and plump as ever. He looked up into the sky and sighed, then had enough sense to throw both his arms up to protect himself as two hard suitcases crashed down upon him, one springing open and spilling an assortment of books into the field.  
  
The night was aswirl with stars peeking through the dimness. All around, a rustle of grass or wheat or something of the sort swayed in the quiet air, accompanied now by the additional harmony of pages fluttering in the breeze.  
  
 _Oh Crowley,_ he thought.  
  
 _Hell will destroy you. _  
  
His worst fears realized, he again found himself reaching for his sword, remembering of course that the flaming one he’d been issued was locked away somewhere with the other apocalyptic symbols. Sure, he’d signed it away but still, he knew he’d be able to reach it if She deemed it necessary. It had happened once before, hadn’t it?  
  
His hand passed through space and came away with nothing. Steely eyes pointed heavenward, he clenched his fist. Until then, or until he came up with some cunning or inventive plan, he was, as Crowley had indicated, defenseless.  
  
So where was he?  
  
“Mrow?”  
  
The sound drew his attention to a furry outline to his left. A cat weaved in and out of the tall stalks of vegetation, eyes glowing slightly as it padded towards him. Aziraphale sat up. The field stretched out all around him*, nary a tree or a rise in elevation to break up the terrain. He’d never been all that skilled in geolocating transference, so although he assumed this was Greece, he’d been relying on the implication of Crowley’s direction to determine where he landed.  
  
It didn’t quite feel like Greece.  
  
The cat came closer, and he reached out to stroke it, absently running his hand down it’s back as he widened his perception of the area. Warm. Dark. Rustling, comfortable. The stalks around him, he realized, were topped with flowers**, and they gave a very light and pleasant scent to the air.  
  
The cat nipped his finger.  
  
“Ow!” he drew his hand back in dismay. The cat dashed off, and the cool wind picked up, blowing over the flowers and loosing a few of them to the air. He realized then what was off. There were no humans here, none that he could feel anyways. There was… something. Like souls without bodies, like the feeling after Death strolls through a battlefield and all is silent and calm. Spooky. Aziraphale shivered.  
  
Well this was getting him nowhere. This lying in a field business. He was meant to find someone – he had no idea who. And he was meant to wait for Crowley, in the hope that Crowley would be able to escape the clutches of the demons that had come for him. If only Crowley could have come with him. Why couldn’t they both have snapped over to find this whoever-it-was?  
  
First things first. He got up and gathered his books together, packing them back into the suitcase and latching it shut. He had no clue what direction to go in since everything seemed to stretch out the same to infinity. So, with no better choice laid out before him, he let his internal compass be his guide and set off towards the East.  
__

_\- o -_

Sonneillon munched contentedly on the final mouthful of breakfast sandwich. They’d been having a staring contest, and Crowley wasn’t sure who was winning. He supposed Sonneillon was, since he himself was currently weighed down with an iron collar that greatly reduced his ability to work magic and had both his arms bound behind him with what felt like barbed wire. Hell hadn’t taken his human body back, but they had taken his sunglasses. Regardless, it was threatening to be a very long contest.  
  
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in this type of situation before, so he knew how it usually went down, and how he had tolerated it in the past. First move: try not to think too much. This was probably the most difficult rule to follow, but it was very important. In hell, there was no such thing as a private thought. Any demon that outranked another was empowered to speak without being spoken to, to drop into another’s head unannounced, and to listen in on whatever was going on in there. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary to dull his thoughts if he was going to have any chance at all to survive.  
  
Second move: the less powers used, the better. It wasn’t that there was a whole lot of thought put into imprisoning a demon in hell; planning was not hell’s strength. Reaction was. Even against iron, he was pretty sure he could escape the bonds of the collar and the arm restraints by transforming into a snake, but where would that get him? Well, in the past, it had gotten him chopped up into little bits which was unbelievably unpleasant. Or it had gotten him ridiculed and laughed at and then chopped up, because there wasn’t much a snake could do to escape a sealed prison cell. He’d seen another prisoner try consuming the demon guarding them and even that that didn’t help things, since being swallowed didn’t stop the guard from taking out the machetes. They’d go back and forth like that in a gruesome rendition of a Benny Hill sketch until both called a truce and retreated to the start to try again.  
  
Hell was the progenitor of attrition warfare.  
  
Third move: know your enemy. What do they ultimately want, and was it something Crowley could help with? As he was under interrogation for some ‘good’ thing happening above-ground that (of course) he had had nothing **whatsoever** to do with (why would you even ask?), he’d discern who his captor was, and see if he couldn’t in fact move them up in ranks or help them achieve their infernal goal of getting named Demon of the Month or whatever else motivated them to possibly take a pass on the torture thing in exchange for what they _really_ wanted. One of his strong suits that; talking people into things.  
  
Crowley knew Sonneillon. This last move was going to be a tricky one, since the thing Sonneillon greatly, seethingly, undeniably wanted was for Crowley to be out of the picture. She’d wanted that ever since the Big Boss had given the “make some trouble” order to Crowley and not, in fact, to Sonneillon.  
  
Wiping grease from her fingers, Sonneillon got up off her perch and walked towards him.  
  
“You know why you’re here?”  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
“Not really, just thought you might be curious.”  
  
“Oh, I dunno, probably another commendation, though I don’t recall getting trussed up before receiving those in the past.”  
  
She grinned coldly, showing all her teeth. “Yes. Your commendations. Pretty sure all of those were revoked. Incinerated. Your metals melted down for crucifixion nails or hollow pointed bullets or something.”  
  
He said nothing. Didn't blink.  
  
She conjured a pair of pruning shears out of the hot sulfurous air. “I actually wasn’t around for your trial, you know. Unfortunately. Can you believe that?” She worked the sheers back and forth, the metal blades sliding against each other making a _‘shing’_ noise. Crowley tried not to look at them. “Was dealing with all the deaths that were resurrected after the world didn’t end. Bit of a shame; I had a whole load of half-digested sailors to reconstruct.” _‘shing’_ “We’ll get them back though. No, my point is, someone apparently didn’t trust that you had actually survived that bath, nor that your little angel friend survived the hellfire show. So I was asked to test the theory.” _’shing’_ “And it seems that your angel wasn’t as unscathed this time.”  
  
“He’s not my angel.”  
  
Sonneillon eyed him, then waved a hand, and the wires attached to his wrists began to move, to pull taught and then upwards. They bit into his skin as he scrabbled to find his footing, the wire forcing him to rise.  
  
“Why did you ask him to run away with you?”  
  
Crowley’s tone was even, his whole body convulsing in a shrug. “Sounded like a laugh.”  
  
Sonneillon’s voice was just as even. “I can see right through you you know.”  
  
“Then why bother asking.”  
  
“Why bother training rats to take down the cellular infrastructure of all of London? Why not just take it down?” With an exaggeration of teeth and a manifestation of glowing red eyes she leaned forward and smiled horribly. “’Cuz it’s FUN!”  
  
Then, as an afterthought, “…obviously.”  
  
She reached out to snatch one of his fingers, and he squirmed as an automatic reaction to avoid what his mind knew was coming next.  
  
 ** _‘Shing.’_**  
  


\- x -

_Keep calm and carry on_. Aziraphale was not English, despite what his passport said, but every fiber of his being embraced the stalwart stance of that nationality to make it through the hardest of times. And there had been some hard times. And he was pretty sure this was one of them.  
  
Although it didn’t look like it from the outside. To a less-informed observer, it appeared that Aziraphale was sitting in a tiny, cluttered, some might call it cramped, front room of a small but well-maintained cottage-style house. There was a small galley kitchen, some tactful curtains, and two thick doors that Aziraphale thought must lead to other rooms in the back. It would look as if he had accepted a cup of very non-English tea and was sipping it politely.  
  
It would further appear to onlookers that his host were nothing more than an attractive middle-aged man with a glorious smile on his face and not, in fact, the first non-Arch angel Aziraphale had encountered on Earth in six millennia. If in fact he were still on Earth.  
  
Well, he expected Asphodel was an angel. It was hard to tell. He was tall, brown skinned, and he had a turban covering his head. And he lived with about 45 cats. Probably more.  
  
Aziraphale was trying very hard not to, as humans tended to say in the common vernacular, “lose his shit.”  
  
He took another sip of the herbal tea.  
  
“So do you in fact mean,” he said back to the man (person, angel?) who had made such the indication to him, “that you have been on Earth as long as we… as long as I have?”  
  
Asphodel nodded and pet the large fluffy white cat in his lap.  
  
“I am sorry if this is frightfully rude of me, but why have I never heard of you?”  
  
“Oh my position was never codified in the texts I don’t think. Maybe it was? There was this gentleman John Maccerone that passed through here that seemed to say as much. I don’t have a lot of access to the outside. That’s by choice, if I’m being brutally honest. It’s scary out there!”  
  
“Yes well,” Aziraphale set aside his tea. “Rather.”  
  
He had come across the house soon enough after he noticed the tail of a cat waving like a beacon over the monocultured field of flowers. He still had the off-putting sense of being in a location with no humans to speak of, (no birds or insects either, once he thought to notice) but being that the cat seemed the only other creature in the area, he thought he could do worse than to follow it.  
  
Eventually he spied the stone cottage. It appeared like a mirage upon the never-ending horizon. He was closer than he expected, and he was surprised he hadn’t noticed the place before. The red tile roof stood out against the landscape, and he saw a painted sign hung over the door. As he drew close enough to make it out, the cat jumped through an open window.  
  
He read the Latin out loud. “ _Perfugium. Non resolutio._ ” He set down his suitcases, glanced left, then bowed his head. _“Is this where I am meant to be? Lord? Yes, hello. Sorry for the silence. Been a bit… had a bit on my mind lately. But I’m sure you don’t need to hear that.”_ He swallowed. _“That’s not to say I didn’t try to reach out. You know. Earlier? Possibly it was through the wrong channels, I don’t know. I haven’t had a lot of new information to go on lately. From You. Directly that is. Which is fine. I understand. Well, that is to mean, I don’t understand of course but I know that is all part of the… the…”_ He drew another breath, and it caught painfully in his chest. _“They took him. And I really hope, that is to say, I’m praying to you. For him. Right now. Please. I need your help.”_  
  
As had been the case for some time, he received no sign. “Right then,” he thought. He walked up to the door and knocked.  
  
From within the house he heard some rustling, then thumping, then the door, which apparently had been unlocked, pulled inwards, and an angel stood before him. He gasped.  
  
“Hello, yes?” the other angel said, then his eyes widened in what almost looked like recognition and his smile broadened. “Oh!”  
  
“I believe I am meant to find you?” Aziraphale said lamely.  
  
“You’re Crowley’s fellow!”  
  
And he almost collapsed. “You know Crowley?” He asked. “Please, is he alright?”  
  
A complex series of movements passed over the other angel’s face, his eyebrows bouncing first up then down, his forehead furrowing, and his smile faltering for a moment. He glanced behind him into the small confines of the space, then shook his head and shrugged. “I think…. would you like to come inside?”  
  
“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said, the worry and the fear and the exhaustion of his trek finally catching up to him.  
  
Asphodel had introduced himself and poured them tea. Which brought them up to the point of Aziraphale asking, “how do you know Crowley?”  
  
“Oh that was a long time ago,” he said, stretching out the ‘o’ in _'long'_. “We sort of realized we were both here. But then he had to go. Other stuff to do, and obviously I didn’t want to have any part in it. But then, well,” and he glanced down shyly, “I have to admit something. I did see you two again. Together.”  
  
 _Keep calm. Keep calm._ “Yes, and?”  
  
“Well, you seemed very engaged in something. Something to do with grapes and so on. But I was very happy to see you! I just didn’t want to interrupt.”  
  
Aziraphale decided to try a different tactic. “What do you know about Crowley? Why did he want me to come here? Why did he never tell me there was another representative here on Earth.”  
  
Asphodel shook his head. “Oh this isn’t exactly Earth. But more than that, you saw the sign out front.”  
  
“I did, but I’m afraid I don’t really understand.”  
  
Asphodel skritched the cat under its chin. “This is a place of safety, not of answers. _Perfugium. Non resolutio._ ”  
  
Aziraphale felt as if he couldn’t take much more of this riddling. “What does that mean?”  
  
Asphodel rubbed his hand over his bristly beard thoughtfully, then stood, dumping the cat from his lap. “Here. Follow me.” They walked together to one of the windows and he pulled away the partial curtains. Aziraphale looked out and drew back, startled.  
  
It was heaven. He was staring into heaven. Michael and Gabriel conferred with each other over a glass-topped table. They seemed to take no notice of the house or of them peering out the window. “Is that… real?”  
  
“It is. They don’t see me. No one sees those in this house. As long as they don’t see me, I’m safe.”  
  
Aziraphale looked across the small enclosure to the window on the other side. “So is that way…?” he pointed downwards, and Asphodel stroked his beard again.  
  
“Um. Well. For me there is no up or down. It’s all the same. Both ways.”  
  
They walked across to the other window, and he drew aside the curtains.  
  
Crowley was screaming.  
  
“No!” Aziraphale flung his hands up to the glass.  
  
Asphodel pulled him away and quickly shut the curtains again.  
  
“I need to go to him!” Aziraphale turned on him, wild-eyed. “Did you see? Did you know?”  
  
The look on Asphodel’s face was almost pained. Almost. “That is what happens there. You know that as well as I. If you leave here, they’ll know. Both sides.”  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
“You are not being rational.”  
  
“I don’t even know what that means here!”  
  
Asphodel bit his lip. “Here – I can show you this.” He turned to the back of the cottage, to the two doors. They were old and wooden, both whitewashed numerous times, marred and a bit dingy, but with well-oiled hinges and polished doorknobs. He walked to them and flung them both open at once.  
  
Aziraphale was hit by a sudden wave of feelings. Lost souls. Some were happy, some sad, many confused. All waiting. Asphodel shut the doors again.  
  
“That is not meant for you, principality. Those are the waiting room of heaven and hell. That’s what this place is. They come here. The humans. They have for all time. I let them in. Eventually, they choose a door and they end up there,” he gestured out the one window, then the other, “or there. I am not here to choose or to determine. This is a place of safety, not of answers.”  
  
“But,” he stumbled, “but Crowley. You know him. You must know.”  
  
He shook his head. “I have seen both of you go to your respective locations. As you know, there are many doors that will take you to heaven or hell. I have seen many things happen. But that’s all. I have just seen. I have seen it all.” And for a moment, his eyes clouded. A black cat with a stubby tail leapt up and perched on his shoulder. He reached over and scratched behind its ears.  
  
“What am I to do?”  
  
He shook his head again. “Wait.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * [The Asphodel Meadows](https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/811/891) is a section of the ancient Greek underworld where ordinary souls were sent to live after death. Homer's "asphodel meadow" has throughout Western literary history been envisioned as a pleasant and even desirable place. But this is not the picture drawn in the Odyssey, where it is portrayed as a dark, gloomy, and mirthless place.
> 
> ** [In Greek legend the asphodel is one of the most famous of the plants connected with the dead and the underworld.](https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Asphodelus) The asphodel was also supposed to be a remedy for poisonous snake-bites and act as a guard against sorcery.
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	6. Who goes next?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Hell, torture, descriptions of mental and physical pain, bullying, gaslighting, worms (technically blind snakes), physical trauma
> 
> EDIT: If you wish to skip these scenes, if you see a "-o-" scroll ahead until you see "-x-" and keep reading.

-o-

Crowley opened his eyes.

Sonneillon was sitting on her throne, eating an Egg McMuffin.

“You must really like those things,” Crowley croaked, surprised but not surprised at the haggard sound of his own voice. That was the shitty thing about hell. Everything. Everything was shocking until it wasn’t. Then it was just horrible. It was an endurance test, but it wasn’t really a test, because you never finished it and it wasn’t pass / fail, it was just fail. Over and over and over again.

Sonneillon contemplated the sandwich. “You can stop time.” She let that sit in the air, and Crowley tried not to think too hard about it. She’d obviously said it in order to goad him into a conversation, but he wasn’t feeling quite up to it just then. He was actually thinking about how much pain he could stand before he had to knit his shoulders back into their sockets, because he was pretty sure that, if and when he had to resort to that, they’d just be pulled right back out before he were finished. He’d already regrew his fingers a number of times only to have them snapped, dislocated, or pruned off again. Eventually his body had bled out and he’d lost consciousness, only to wake once he’d been forced back together enough to continue the ordeal.

He felt like an egg left frying in a cast iron pan for about 4 days.

Rising, she stalked towards where he lie crumpled in a dismal heap on the stone floor. “Why do you think the Infernal One gifted that to you? You think you are so special. Able to flit about out there, outside the confines of the underground. Making a show of how well you can do your job. You think anyone cares?”

He remembered all of this. He knew hell, he knew what it was capable of, the chides, the taunts, the bullying and the imposed fear, but the truth was, hell was set up to punish humans. Demons were awful to each other, but that wasn’t the main point of it was it. Fact being, there hadn’t been that many times Crowley had been subjected to the wrath of another demon. He’d worked hard to keep himself in line, keep out of the line of fire, as it were.

Still, he’d seen it enough, and he’d certainly seen what had been set up for those damned humans (most of which paled in comparison with the things the humans did to each other if he were being honest; hell’s array of torture devices grew and updated the more humans filled occupancy). For the times that he had been on the receiving end though, he remembered. He remembered the pain. He remembered how he tried to set it aside as its own thing - not as a part of him. Physical or mental, the white-hot flames on his bones and in his ligaments that burned to his core, streaking down his ribs and settling in his guts, he made every attempt to compartmentalize and attend to them logically. But eventually, pain blurred the world around him. As much as he tried to separate it, it became him. And then he just tried to last. If he could just last one more second, one more fraction of a second, then he could last another. And another. Don’t think too far ahead. One fraction at a time.

“Did you ever try more than that? Ever try time travel?”

Currently he was pretty sure he had all his digits, a thought that he realized, as Sonneillon continued to ramble on, with a bit of dread. Funny thing that. _“Oh damn. They are done doing the cutty cutty with my fingers,”_ because it meant she was letting him come back together to get him ready for whatever was next. Don’t think about it. The terror of what could come next could be just as bad as the pain.

“I have, just recently. After your little _‘fuck you’_ to down below, there were some openings for your specific tasks that opened back up. And there’s a certain time period I really have a thing for, you know?”

She had come closer to him, he could feel her looming out of the darkness. An oily disgust overtook him in her presence and he wanted to curl back within himself, protect himself, but his damaged joints did not allow it. He could merely breath and swallow and exist for one more second at a time.

“I think I could go back there if there was one thing not standing in my way. Hm. When could that be?” She was bending over him, hot sour breath enveloping him in a cloud. He rolled his eyes up to meet hers and saw nothing but empty unending hate. He swallowed again.

“April 23, 1985?”*

Sonneillon started, dropping her guard for a mere moment. He grinned stupidly at her.

“EDEN!” she roared, and dissolved into a pile of writhing black sightless wormlike things, roiling and falling over themselves. There was a hiss and a sizzle to the air, sounding like a million thorns falling over each other. They flowed like a black tide towards him, all poison and slime and shining, squirming bodies, each one only as long and as thick as a coffin nail.

Blind snakes.

Enough of this, he thought. He should have known better, but his human form ached and howled to be mended, and as the pile of glistening writhing creatures rolled towards him, he could only imagine them filling his every orifice and then reforming to Sonneillon’s solid body, and that was not a future to be relished. Reaching for the powers of hell, he struggled desperately until he was able to peel himself backwards and back to the long coiling heavy form of a red-bellied snake.

He hefted himself up the wall and clung to the ceiling, even as the pile that was Sonneillon reached for him. Something was certainly not right. A few of his vertebrae clicked in a way they hadn’t in the past, and there was a transition of the inflamed tenseness that had existed in his human form to his serpent one. But beyond that, he felt weak, so weak he wavered between forms for a moment. Then he fell off the ceiling. The pile of worms groaned and a grizzled voice poured from a thousand mouths.

“You were rejected by hell, traitor! Do you think this is a game? I should have been the one to tempt the humans! You are a farce, a failure. A joke. You had the chances. And what did you use them for?” The pile shimmered as it continued to speak, and Crowley tried to curl away into a corner. Sonneillon grew in size, multiplying worms birthing from the ones of the generation before. “Visiting with angels, nice as you please? Fucking up the Antichrist? Harboring holy water in your very possession and using it against one of your own?”

The things tumbled over themselves, enveloping his body, regardless of its shape. He in turn forced himself to recoil and twist, struggling against the pinch in his center spine that threatened to make him seize up in frozen muscles and clenching nerves. Every thread of her was burning as it attacked him, and he fought back, throwing them off as fast as they covered him.

“And yet, and yet you survive. You slunk through the trial and you hid yourself away, like a…”

He gave in and fell back into his human body, as she returned to her more solid form as well. Her hand was clamped like a claw around his windpipe.

“Like a sssssnake?” he hissed.

Her teeth clenched. “Tell me why you asked him to run away with you?”

He forked his tongue at her.

She crushed him.

-

“Let’s try something different.”

Crowley did not want to open his eyes. He really didn’t.

“Come on. Open up.” He did a mental check of his situation and found he was completely whole. All his fingers, every blood cell, all his bones aligned and his ligaments stitched up. He even thought his liver looked better than it had in decades.

“I don’t trust you,” he said.

“I know. You shouldn’t. It’s fine. Do you want the sandwich this time?”

He opened one eye. She sat on her throne and next to her was his desk. His table. He opened his other eye and wished he hadn’t. She’d recreated his flat, here in this prison cell. All of it, right down to a pair of sunglasses on the surface of the table. He tried not to look around since too many thought cruised through his brain when he did. She held out the wrapped breakfast sandwich to him.

“Sorry about before. Well. I'm not, but you get it. Had some stuff to work through.” She set the food down and patted his throne. “Come on. Been a while since you stood up.”

“How many times have you eaten that sandwich?”

“I like it. It’s greasy.”

He eyed her. He didn’t want to be intrigued.

"But damn it, you are aren’t you?” she asked, reading his mind.

“Shut up.”

She grinned, and it was less wolfish than in the past. “Come one. Come up here. Show me your stuff.”

“No.”

“Talk to me.”

“Why?”

She slung her legs over the arm of the chair and gazed lazily at him. “You supposedly have this great imagination. So why have you never looked out of every eye of every snake that has ever lived? Past and present. Hell, future as well.” She scratched her chin. “How much could you have kept an eye on? How many surprises could you have avoided? Loads, I would imagine. It’s what I would have done.”

“Very bright of you. Very clever.”

“Come on, let’s talk about time. Let’s talk about how we can make this work.”

“Let’s make a deal?”

“Maybe.”

He rose. He was not the steadiest on two legs no matter what the day, but currently he trusted bipedalism less than usual. Still, all seemed to be in order. She’d even released him from his collar and shackles. He warily approached and perched on the facsimile of his chair.

“What’s up.”

“I have something of yours.”

He looked around. “You seem to have a lot of my stuff here. So what. What good is stuff to me?”

She paused for a moment, then swung her legs around and stood. She walked towards something hanging on the wall and he felt his stomach drop. “oh, wait.” She paused and snapped her fingers, bringing the light up a notch so that he could view the portrait of Mona Lisa. “There actually might be someone else who would be more interested in this possession.”

“What do you want?”

Sonneillon wandered back to the table and sat herself on it.

“Obviously I want to be rid of you.”

“You don’t though. You were rid of me. You already said it yourself. You were able to get more powers because of my banishment,” he leaned back to look at her. “Let’s get real. This is about something else. Just say it’s about power. Say it’s about wanting me to suffer. It’s ok. You’re a demon. It’s what you were made for.”

She pursed her lips.

 _Unless that’s not it,_ he said to her in her mind, without speaking. _Unless you don’t want to do what you were made to do. Is that it?_

Her eyes narrowed and he knew he was getting closer. “You are not going to let Ligur take me out. That would be way too easy.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said and snapped her fingers. The iron collar was back. The Mona Lisa swung out, and the safe door popped open.

A voice from outside the cell rang out in a singsong: “CCroowwllleeeeee!”

“Oh please,” Crowley groaned dramatically.

“I guess it’s back to the physical stuff. Too bad. I did so hope we could work something out.”

“Oh no not….” And there in the doorway stood lord Hastur. “… him.”

As Sonneillon exited, he couldn’t stop from thinking, please. _Please wait. Just a little longer angel._

\- x -

“Wait.”

“That is ludicrous, I cannot just stand idly by as hell has his way with him! This is beyond to pale.”

Asphodel fretted. “There is nothing else to do here.”

“I apologize but I cannot just drink tea and read my books and wait for my… for Crowley to be exterminated.”

“What will you do?”

“I will think of something.” Aziraphale looked around the dingy front room and his eyes lit upon his suitcases. There still seemed to be some dirt wedged in the corner of one where it’d crashed into the ground and popped open. “Wait, you said that this place was not included in any of the holy documents?”

Asphodel shook his head slowly. “Not as such.”

“Except for who did you say passed through here? Maccerone? I have that! Could there be a clue?”

“A clue?”

“Yes, some sort of clue of how we can get out of this mess.”

Asphodel sipped his tea as Aziraphale opened the case and rummaged about. It didn’t take him long to sit back on his heels in dismay. “It’s not here. I must have left it in the field. I need to go get it. I need to try.”

Asphodel paced, avoiding trampling on the tails of a few cats who lazed about the floor. “If you leave here, I cannot guarantee it will be here for your return.”

“Satan Bless it, whyforever not!” he turned back.

Asphodel reached out. “Angel Azirapahle. I know you. I have watched you and the demon for… for centuries. You are not rash. You are thoughtful. You are smart. You are not one to let emotion overtake your decisions.”

“Well perhaps it is time I do.” He sighed. “I… I apologize. I know directly where the book might be. It would be back to the west. If you can give me a modicum of time, I will not dawdle.” He grasped back at Azphodel’s hands. “Please. I must do something. He didn’t know, he couldn’t have known they’d do this to him.”

Asphodel knitted his brow. “He is of hell, no matter what. There are certain things he knows that you will never know. There are certain things that are different for him than they are for you. Things he needs to face, and tolerate, and battle.”

“But not alone. I…. I need to be there with him. For him. I need him to know. I don’t care that he is in hell. Wherever he is, I will go to him. I just need to plan out how.”

They stared at each other – two human-shaped supernatural beings in limbo. Aziraphale squeezed his hands. In hope. In faith. Finally, Asphodel nodded.

“Oh thank you!”

“I will watch you. Please hurry back.”

With a shake, they released each other, and Aziraphale headed out the door.

\- o -

Hastur had questions. Ligur had questions. But eventually Crowley just had to throw up his hand and ask, “you’re not actually here to talk are you? Just get on with it.” And so they beat the ever loving shit out of him. As he wheezed in a heap on the ground, Sonneillon reentered and took the tartan Thermos from Ligur’s hands.

“Sorry, Satan’s orders.”

The Dukes of Hell gave him one last kick to the ribs, flipped him the bird, turned, and left.

“Well, they were a right barrel of laughs. Not very inventive, but you have to give one up for pure brute force every once in a while.”

One second at a time. He tried to concentrate on breathing, but was finding that difficult with a crushed septum bubbling goo onto the stones. Instead he tried to concentrate on not breathing and quietly healing the worst of his wounds.

“This is a very pretty container by the way. Wonder where you get something like this?” She undid the top of the Thermos and swirled the contents around. “Pretty strong stuff. You think you can take it? Think you’re still protected?”

She made a big to do of swishing it around, almost spilling it, starting to put the top on, then she upturned the entire container over his head.

“Oopsies. Guess it was just plain old run-of-the-mill water.”

He knew that. He felt it long before it doused him. There was no reverence. No iota of the angel on it at all.

Sonneillon leaned down close to his ruined form and asked, “why did you ask him to run away with you?”

Using what strength he could muster, Crowley drew back and spit in her face. She reached up to catch the gob of spittle with her finger and wiped it into her mouth. “You’re tasting pretty mortal these days,” she said, and shook her finger at him. “Remember that.”

-x-

Aziraphale was in the fields. He took a deep breath and started forth. It appeared to be mid-day and the sky was high and blue and gorgeous.

_“I want to fly up there.”_

_“You should.”_

_“Maybe someday.”_

He shook his weary head and sullied forth. From the shallow depths of his memory, he drew forth a poem and recited to himself like a mantra:

> How vain and dull this common world must seem
> 
> To such a one as thou, who should’st have talked
> 
> At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
> 
> Through the cool olives of the Academe:
> 
> Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream
> 
> For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played
> 
> With the girls in that Phæacian glade
> 
> Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
> 
> Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
> 
> Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
> 
> Back to this common world so dull and vain,
> 
> For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
> 
> The heavy fields of scentless Asphodel,
> 
> The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.**

_What were you playing at Oscar, you romantic fool?_ He trudged forward. The flowers, as he went, seemed to thin but he tried to heed them not. He had promised to be focused and dedicated and Saints be buried, he was going to get that book.

_“So um. Hi. Me again. I, um. Believe we need to have a chat. A discussion._

_"First off, I want to thank you for, erm,”_ he searched his memory. _“Cake. And. Um. Bach. No wait…. Um. Puppies,”_ he offered. And felt bad about it.

_“Prayer is meant for them. I know that. But I have nothing left. So. Here we are._

_“Did I… did I do the right thing? Did I misunderstand what I was meant to do. I don’t mean to question but, well. Perhaps. Perhaps I just need a bit of a refresher. I do believe I tried to follow the rules, tried to be true to everyone else._

_“And it seems…”_ He paused searching the ground for the book. _“It seems that seemed to fail rather spectacularly. With the discorporation and the uh flames and all.”_

_“So, again, I suppose. Just asking. For help. Help me do what is right.”_

As an addendum he said, _“amen.“_

And there it was.

He reached down and wrapped his hand around the discarded tome. Feeling a rise of heavenly aura, he smiled, thinking his prayers had been answered.

“Aziraphale,” Michael's voice startled him upright. “I’ve been searching for you

-o-

“Next up, we have the Prince zimself, Beelzebub!” Sonneillon announced like a game show host.

“No need. Close the door.”

Sonneillon shrugged and latched the cell door shut. Beelzebub stood for a moment before dissolving into swarm of botflies. The transformation entered the cell through the slatted bars for only a minute or two, returned and stood solid once again.

“Let me know if you want to speed along the incubation at all. Or make it lazst longer.”

“This is why you are a Prince among demons! Simple, straight forward. Elegant.” Sonneillon looked about ready to clap as Beelzebub vacated the prison.

-x-

“Michael! Me old mate. Oh um.” He glanced around as the fields of grey flowers seemed to have dissolved into a more standard issue rolling beauty of rocky hills. Standing before him was the Archangel Michael flanked by two platoon leaders who appeared slightly ill at ease. He bit back a curse. Team Goody-two-shoes bloody well had come looking for him.

“This is not a courtesy call. We’ve gotten word that there is a chance that you were released to the world untowardly. And that you should be recalled to heaven for further inquiries.”

“Oh yes?” he asked, mind racing, “and how do you propose that? Do you believe I shall go with you willingly?”

The platoon leaders made very discrete side-eyes at each other, then looked to Michael whose composure did not waver. “If you do not, we will be forced to use, well, force. I hope it does not come to that.” The lower angels, hands on the hilts of their swords, stood at the ready.

Just then, a tinny version of Pachabel’s Cannon in D began playing from his jacket pocket.

All beings standing there in the field that was no longer the sacred Realm of the Dead paused before Aziraphale nodded his head in apology, removed his cellphone, and clicked the button to answer it.

“Hello?”

_“What in all that is unholy are you playing at!”_

His heart stopped at the sounds of the voice on the other end, and he fought desperately not to let his face tell. Instead, wrestling the sum total of the possible heavenly host powers he still possessed, he radiated the shining glow of divine light from within him and locked eyes directly with Michael.

“God?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * [April 23, 1985](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1913612_1913610_1913608,00.html)  
> ** Poem 48. Phêdre. Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). Poems. 1881. [Citation here](https://www.bartleby.com/br/143.html)
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	7. How they get a new lease on life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Harrowing Of Hell = "The sudden appearance of light in all-enveloping darkness, rumours of a great event, the devils in hell scurrying around in fear and confusion, a loud voice crying out of the blinding brightness, and then a sudden rush of loving embrace as the souls in hell are given release." ***
> 
> \- CW: parasitic flies, vomiting dead animals (snakes) 
> 
> EDIT If you wish to skip Crowley being tortured, when you see the "-o-" scroll ahead until you see "-x-" and keep reading.
> 
> NOTE: There is one instance of Crowley in hell, using a miracle to reform his body momentarily, and then falling back to the floor that I had to leave in in order to explain how Aziraphale got that phone call.
> 
> I also have left in the revenge that Crowley wrecks upon his captor. 
> 
> AVENGING ANGEL TIME!
> 
> YOU GUYS! It's (technically) done! I took as my mantra for 2020, Neil Gaiman's phrase, "finish things" to heart. So here you go. Thanks so much for coming along on my journey. Oh and yah, eight is my favorite number so I had to add a chapter 8 as an epilogue which is 100% safe for work! ;-)

_“Aw shit,”_ said the voice on the other end.

Aziraphale did not break eye contact with the Archangel. “Yes, Michael is here.” He nodded, then slowly covered the lower half of his smartphone as if it were a mouthpiece and stage-whispered, “the Almighty has been trying to get a hold of you.”

The two angels at her side stepped back a bit as Michael’s hand unconsciously went to her pocket. As Aziraphale went back to nodding and listening, she pulled out her angelic phone-like device and glanced at it. She shook her head and held it out. The other two looked worriedly at the lack of missed calls. Aziraphale shrugged and made an over-exaggerated, “search me” face at them.

 _“Damn, it’s Michael?"_ seethed the voice in his ear. _"I knew it.”_

“Oh? Oh really? No, I had not heard.” He began to pace and make small noises of agreement and general hums and haws to indicate he was listening.

“ _You have to get back to the house_ ” the voice said. 

Again, he covered the phone and, as an aside, stated: “apparently the War actually did begin, just not in the way anyone expected.”

The three angels in front of him looked back and forth confusedly. He continued to pace. “No I don’t think any of us…. Oh? Return to Heaven?” He halted mid-stride. “Now?” Nodding to the other three, he stood solidly, then bent slightly at the knees. “But of course. Of course! Immediately if not sooner.”

Aziraphale held his breath, took the phone away from his ear, and rolled his eyes skyward, preparing to depart. The Archangel hesitated only a moment before she did the same. Then, all four of them straightened their stances.

Aziraphale gave a little hop and landed back onto earth as the other three burst into the air on holy beams of light and disappeared behind the clouds.

He turned tail and ran.

“CROWLEY!” he shouted into the phone as he bounced along down the hill. “Are you alright?”

“ _Are YOU alright? What in blazes are you doing? Get back inside!_ ”

“I… I…” he said, getting a bit winded. The landscape began to melt and change around him, like a watercolor painting seen through a thick mist. The tall grey flowers began to return, the field stretching out before him and, on the horizon, he could glimpse a red roof coming into view. “Yes, nearly there!”

“ _Good! For fuck’s sake, stay there! Erh. Uh._ ” And the line went dead.

“What is going on? Crowley! Baaaah.” He slipped the phone into his pocket. Up ahead, the door to the house opened, and Asphodel beckoned. Aziraphale jogged as fast as he could, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck start to bristle. He was certain it wouldn’t take long for Michael and the others to recognize his deception and once they did, he was done for.

There were only a few meters left between him and the door. He saw two of the cats standing at either side of the opening, backs arched, fur raised, ears back. One of them growled, low and mean, and let out a fierce hiss.

Across the expanse, the tell-tale hum of angelic arrival echoed. He flung himself forward.

“Oh fffff…!”

Asphodel slammed the door shut as Gabriel, Michael, and a cadre of lesser ranked angels materialized in a field of wildflowers. Pretty yellow and pink ones.

Aziraphale collapsed on the floor of the house, eyes shut, gasping for breath.

Eventually, when he realized he was not being run through by a sacred weapon or being placed in shackles, he opened his eyes. Asphodel stood partly in shadow, peeking out the curtained front window. “That was close!”

“I, I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale breathed, getting to his feet and brushing himself off. He double-checked himself: his phone was still in his pocket, unharmed. The book was in his possession, and the rest of him appeared to be intact as well. He came up behind Asphodel and tentatively looked over his shoulder. 

Out the window, he could see the Grecian countryside, all rocky beauty and speckled with the bright spots of flowers. Completely confounded, a group of angels wandered around aimlessly. They looked up, down, spun in circles, shrugged, and eventually got bored. Two Archangels, who had arrived with weapons drawn, eventually lowered their swords and began having a heated exchange about something or other. They completely payed no heed to the house, as if it didn’t exist. 

-o-

Crowley might be an optimist, but he was not an idiot.

He knew there were those who would argue this point, and depending on his mood or how much Chardonnay he’d ingested, he’d humor them the claim. Being an optimist was an important aspect to his demonic character – one had to have a devilishly large ego to believe things would always turn out to one’s benefit. And yes, you could do some supremely stupid-seeming things as an optimist: driving a classic car through a wall of hellfire for example, or imagining that you could commit treason and somehow live to tell the tale. 

He was considering all of this while lying on the floor of hell after being smashed to a hash by Hastur and Ligur. There had to be a positive spin he could put to his current situation, some little thing to keep doubt from creeping in and causing cracks to form in his somewhat tenuous grip on his predicament. At least the container that had been dumped over his head hadn't been real holy water. So that was something.

Then he felt _It._

He’d never been sure exactly what to call _It_ , or why he had _It_ , or even when _It_ began, but at worst, _It_ was a gut feeling, and at best, a sixth sense. In reality, he probably shouldn't call _It_ what it was, especially now. But he couldn't help it.

His Aziraphale-alarm was sounding.

He had not allowed his thoughts to sit more than a fraction on Aziraphale his whole time in hell, and only then when Sonneilon’s back was turned. It was fine; he was practiced at it. It was too dangerous. Sonneillon was already digging around in his mind so he had to be on guard not to let even the merest whisper of his feelings be heard.

But he couldn’t put the kibosh on his angel-in-trouble radar pinging, even in the depths of the underworld.

Bugger all.

Then, to add the cherry to the top of the perfect mix of pain, fear, suffering, and anxiety hanging over his head, he heard the buzz of not a few insects enter the cell. With all the dead thought he could muster, he pressed the alarm silent and buried it as far down within himself as he possibly could.*

Sure enough the black swarm of flies halted before him, hovering and wavering, rippling like a mid-air oil slick. Each individual insect melted into the next, legs and antennae braiding together into one solid pustulant lump. 

He didn’t want to admit it, but he was beginning to lose faith that the universe would look after him.

“I juzt can’t be rid of you can I?”

“Lord Beelzebub,” Crowley said, but it came out more like _Lard Ahhrarha_ since his jaw wasn’t shutting correctly. “Aadon ne no gening up, ut ’m no sso sure ny legsss arr orkin’ right now.”

“What? Oh for Antichrist’s sake pull yourself together so I can at least understand you. What are you doing here?”

He took a moment to refit his jaw, replace his teeth, and draw his legbones back to their anatomically proper order. The sinews and soft tissue were going to take more time. If he did make it out of this, he was going to be sore for weeks. “Well, you recalled me. Sent Sonneillon.”

“I did nothing of the kind. What would I want with a disloyal demon that won’t die? This cell should be packed tight with souls right now, and instead, you’re here. I like Sonneillon’s style, but she does tend to go rogue. Bit of a fly in the ointment.” 

“Oh well, alright then. So I’ll be on my way.”

“I like flies,” Beelzebub said in a stilted manner, holding up a hand. “What good would it be for me to allow you to waltz out of here easy as you please? No, I think I’ll let you fight it out. And if both of you destroy each other, well, it’ll be fun to watch if nothing else.” 

“Ahhhh. I think it’s in your best interest to, erm, let me leave,” he bluffed. “Don’t want to put me in a position to say I told you so.”

“I let you leave once before, and that didn’t seem to keep you out of my hair,” the Prince of Hell snapped, and all Crowley’s work in fixing himself back up was undone in one bonecracking, nausea-inducing instance. “No. I don’t think so.” Beelzebub disintegrated again into botflies, each one filled with eggs fat with parasitic larva. They carpeted his face.

With a last gasp of bravado, he mumbled, “I warned you.”

-

He stayed awake through the whole ordeal. He had to. If he were still concerned with such things, he’d feel sort of honored that a Prince of Hell took enough care to do something so forcibly disgusting to him. The stings hurt, that was for sure, as the ovipositors (or “arse daggers” as he distractedly referred to them in his head) stabbed through his skin and sunk deep into his flesh. 

He had to stay awake, because he knew he only had a moment between the time the flies left him, and Sonneillon reopened the door to come back into the cell to present whatever next nightmare she had planned for him. He had to act quickly, because he’d seen something. He’d seen it on the demonically conjured table, made to look like the desk from his flat. It had been right next to his taunting sunglasses. When he’d composed himself moments before, he’d noticed it, having missed it earlier in his chat with Sonneillon. It all but disappeared on the highly polished surface of the table, but he could see it now, a slight rise of blackness on the polished red marble. He used the stings to keep him distracted, his revulsion in the swelling feeling as each deposited their payload filling his mind. He had to stay sane. Had to stay awake. And when his mind drifted, he thought of his cell – his prison. His distraction. Black, dark, small. 

Finally, the flies done with their facial surgery on him, wavered in the air. He swallowed thickly and coughed, spitting a fly that had wandered down his throat. The whole lot of them dissipated, and he was alone.

-x-

In an instant Crowley snapped a miracle and was on his feet. He wavered only a moment, another wave of nausea flowing over him. This back and forth between broken and built would do him in if nothing else. 

He snagged his mobile phone off the table and dialed.

It worked, because he knew it had to.

Crowley was an optimist for a reason.

As soon as he heard someone rattling at the door, he signed off, set the phone back down and sighed.

“Fuck me,” he said to himself, and crumpled to the floor into an egg-laden, bone-fractured mess once again.

\--

Aziraphale had to concentrate. He knew what was going on outside that one window. The one on the left-hand side. He had bore witness to more than he cared to, but he knew he had to take action. Action had to be taken. He wrung his hands in front of himself. No matter what Crowley had said (multiple times, even), he couldn’t just sit and wait. There were no answers here. He hoped that he could find an answer in the book.

He wished he’d started reading the wretched Fourth Century Bible on the train like he’d hoped to have. He was not a fast reader, and, for all his ability to understand the nuances of any given prophetic or theological tome, it was a slow process.

He wasn’t sure Crowley had that kind of time. He was pretty sure his heart didn’t.

He dug through the known chapters and found nothing amiss. Nothing any stranger than what he’d read ages ago while working in a monastery with one of the original scriptors of the Infamous Bible, volume twelve. That was the one that, due to said ink jockey carrying on a conversation while transcribing Corinthians 13:13** contained the misprint which spawned the Seventh Day Advent Hoppists**** who spent every seventh day hopping.

A cat came to sit on his lap.

Turning pages in a fashion under no normal circumstances would he treat a book, he flipped from one section to the other, comparing, notating, and, at times, looking around the abode he now resided in. If only he could find something, anything that would indicate a solution. He knew what he was looking for, he just didn’t know if it existed.

He almost missed it. Amidst the divided houses and the chasms, the purgatory and the parable of the tenants, he found a sliver of hop.

“Asphodel. I have a proposition!”

-o-

“Oh my fuck, not the sandwich again.” Crowley wasn’t even sure what he was anymore. He was pretty sure he was still trapped in his human body since it hurt so damned much. He felt that perhaps it was beginning to decompose, which depressed him to no end. Time had no meaning, whatever she was doing to it, but he had been broken and rebroken so many times, he was at a loss as to if time even mattered any more. It was back to the seconds. The fraction of seconds. Or whatever one called moments in a place with no time. He rolled back and forth, feeling the vertebrae of his spine bumping against the floor of the cell. It was not pleasant, but it was something he could control, so he concentrated on it: back and forth. 

“I’m beginning to tire of this game.”

“You and me both.”

“I can’t abide by wasting time with someone so pointless and so... so linear. Your thinking is too human for your own good. You know, I might ask our old pal the bringer of light for a visit.”

“Any time’s good for me.”

Sonneillon sighed. “Canadian bacon, American cheese, English muffin. It’s a veritable United Nation of Fast Food.” Her smiled reflected in her words. This was something she cared about. “It was one of mine. You probably missed it. Insured these bastions of miserable souls could open earlier, thus presenting one of the biggest taplines to gluttony yet. I’ve studied Earth. Watched those humans.”

“So you say.”

“I was ready to go. Still might.” 

Back and forth. Back and forth. “I don’t think you can.”

“What?”

Crowley hadn’t even realized his eyes were closed until he pried them open to gaze at her. “You can’t. I mean, you could travel back in time, but there’s something preventing you from getting rid of me and taking my place, am I right?”

She set the sandwich down and reached for something he couldn't see. “Remember when I told you I had something of yours? I wasn’t lying.”

“I never said you were.”

Very carefully, as if it were made of eggshells, she brought it into view. She put it on the table, and he knew it was real.

-x-

Aziraphale was looking out the window and saw it as well.

“I must go,” he said, as Asphodel lifted his pen.

“Are you sure?”

“I am positive. Thank you for this,” he snagged the paper off the writing desk and folded it carefully into his pocket. “Thank you for everything.”

Asphodel blushed. “I am sure I did nothing.”

“Nonsense. You trusted me, and for that I am forever grateful. If we make it back, I promise I will not betray that trust.”

They embraced and Asphodel walked to the the doors at the back of the room. He halted before the one on the left.

“Good luck.”

Grasping the knob, he turned, and opened the doorway to hell.

Aziraphale entered without further hesitation.

The road to hell is easy.

It’s a steep staircase, and it led down. As he descended, it got darker, and hotter.

 _“I doubted myself,”_ he thought. _“I paid so much attention to what everyone else wanted and tried to fit my needs into that.”_

He put his hand to his heart.

_“I know what I need to do.”_

His fingers grasped, and he felt a solid hilt against his palm. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, they vanished. A vast dark corridor stretched out before him. Vague shapes thrashed and twisted across the spattered walls, swallowing up light and staining the very air with sorrow. A howling wind, deep and hollow, seemed to come from everywhere. 

“Bad evening to you, I’m here to unwelcome you to your final punishment,” a bored demon intoned, getting up from behind a reception desk. They looked up, clipboard in hand, “I’ll need you to… Satan destroy us, you’re ah… you’re…!”

And with that, Aziraphale drew the sword from his chest, the blade materializing from flesh to become real. Holding it aloft and feeling what it could do, what it had done, was a rush. With a solid grip, he made a pulsing movement with his arm, and the sword flamed to life.

The demon dropped the clipboard, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

The sword was still his, otherwise he would not have been able to summon it. He was humbled by the honor. He felt the glory in his guts, and the words began to form on his lips before he knew it.

**“I am Aziraphale - Angel of the Lord! Principality and Veteran of the War in Heaven! Guardian of the Eastern Gate! I am here for my love, the Demon Crowley! Stand down, denizen of hell, and release him to me!”**

He flung his arms wide, and with that movements sprung his wings.

The reception demon behind the desk sputtered, “they don’t pay me enough to deal with this,” and beat a hasty egress down the hallway.

Aziraphale strode forward, felt armored with his declaration, and as more demons poked their heads from various office doors, with a determined swoop he launched himself into the air.

\--

Somewhere far off, a klaxon sounded. “What is that?” asked Sonneillon.

Crowley felt the angel's presence pound from every surface like a telltale heart. “That is your day about to get very very bad.”

\--

The first level was the hallway. As he passed each doorway, he swung his sword. Demons lurched back into lunchrooms, filthy and dim, attempting to ignore the fact that an angel was in fact flying down their corridor. Others grasped at him, and he drew on his long-dormant memories of the ways to position his body to avoid their touch. Some of the offices were cells which held sorrowful human souls and, as he passed, he reached out to them. In certain cases, they reached back and passed over such need for comfort he could not help but give it.

An alarm sounded throughout the space of hell, a demon's voice, trained for just such an occasion to induce the ultimate amount of panic and hyperaction screamed, "this is not a drill! To your posts! To your stations!" Then, a lot of garbled swearing, the sound of breaking glass, a whine of feedback, and more swearing. Then it repeated. 

\--

The cellspace around Crowley wavered, and for an instance, he realized where he was. 

"This is your pause! This is in your head, isn't it?" he called, as Sonneillon began to loose her grip. The desk vanished, and his mobile and glasses clattered to the floor. The item she had been threatening him with, a simple tartan Thermos, remained, and she held it in her hands like the grenade it was. She turned a pair of wild eyes upon him. The walls of the cell shot back up, the noise of hell dampening. Reality, if there was such a thing in the bowels of the netherworld, was being tested. 

"It's him! He's what in my way!" 

Crowley squirmed his way across the floor like an eel, unable to muster the strength to transform, or rise. "And you were too blind to realize it at the get go."

She seemed to hesitate, then vanished. Along with her, the ruse she'd painted across the walls of hell, the demon holding cell made of her own time period, a day played over and over and over again, finally ended. Blaring noise poured from a speaker in the wall, next to a microphone and intercom each soul containment unit held, ostensibly for use by the demon guarding the humans sentenced to eternal damnation. 

After what seemed like a century's journey across the floor, he reached his glasses. He started to pull them onto his face, then on second thought dropped them back to the floor and picked up the phone. Using his thumb, which still seemed to work, he unlocked it and pulled up a playlist.

\-- 

The first movement of Carl Orff's " _Carmina Burana_ " was playing through hell's intercom system. 

Because, of course it was. 

Beelzebub entered the control room where Dagon struggled to find a specific page in the "Crisis Manual" that would explain how to deal with a single avenging angel careening through multiple levels of hell. More demons tasked with keeping order to the files rummaged through the volumes attempting to find the index (there was none). There were papers being torn from shelves, binders ripped open, red lights flashing and over it all, the chorus of "Oh Fortuna" chanting. 

"Turn that bloody music off!" Beelzebub yelled across the din.

At that, Crowley's voice wheezed out of the ancient speaker in the flyspecked wall: "Told you so."

And the Intercom burst into flames. 

\--

Aziraphale spun, his blade slicing through the air. At the end of hallway he found nothing more than an empty lift shaft. He didn’t even pause. He dove straight down it.

\--

A white hot blade of lightning careened down from above. Six great thunderclaps cracked the walls of hell with an almost melodious sound, like a giant bell being cleaved by an even giant-er ax. As the seventh cord struck, the cell exploded in a ball of light.

“Tone it down a bit, ya?” Crowley said.

Slowly, deftly, the light abated.

Aziraphale, Angel of the Lord, Principality and Veteran of the War in Heaven, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, and the Love of the Demon Crowley, stood streaming gold at every edge, his boundaries appearing somewhat fuzzy. His grand wings stretched from corner to corner, spread wide, and his ever-loving, bloody, flaming sword was held high with both hands. Crowley almost couldn’t look at him, except for the fact that a portion of what was streaming from him was meant for Crowley. Which was good, because otherwise Crowley thought he’d up and fry.

Aziraphale’s angelic figure reached down and he placed a flat palm to Crowley's forehead. In an instant, his poor battered human body felt better. He felt a heat wash across his face as the infestation of flies was cauterized out of him. Aziraphale took him by the hand and helped him up, an energy flowing out of his fingertips, healing every vein and capillarity with him.

An equally bright flame crashed down behind them, and Sonneillon, tendrils of black pouring off her, reached out with intent to destroy. 

Aziraphale raised his hand back to his sword, but before he could strike, Crowley flung his hand right back at her. Her mouth opened to curse him, but instead of words, from her gullet poured a cascade of dead snakes, Every dead snake that had ever died bodily rushed from her mouth with a monstrous gurgling noise. Whole nests of grass snakes tangled with wrist-thick corn snakes, bloated bodies of long-departed water moccasins flew from her throat in a rush that would not stop.

"I am not usually so vindictive a demon, but for you, I’ll make an exception,” Crowley said. There was no pause as her body convulsed. More and more snakes poured from her lips: chunks of snakes, piles of snakes, snake bodies with rigor mortis, decaying piles, decades-old mouthfulls of bones all continued to rush from deep within her as Crowley strode forward. “Question my imagination, eh?” Giant firehose-thick pythons threw themselves out of her, one after another. 

“An Egg McMuffin’s not demonic!” he fumed. An anaconda that had burst in half from trying to eat an alligator started to disgorge from within her. Coils of it piled around her, thick and wide as military mooring line “It’s the healthiest thing on the menu!”

“Dearest. That’s enough.”

Aziraphale had resolved himself more or less to look back to normal. “No no no. It isn’t nearly! I didn’t have to come here! She brought me here! And for what?” Rattlesnakes that had bit each other to death. Tiny snakelettes eaten by hawks caught between her teeth. “Because she was jealous. So jealous she didn’t even pause to realize she had left the one thing that could have given her what she wanted behind.”

“Are you saying I was your Ace in the Hole as it were?”

Crowley turned with a jerking motion, the flow of snakes finally slowing. “Well, uh, yeah. I mean, hopefully. It worked right?”

“You may think you’ve outsmarted me,” Sonneillon's ragged broken voice finally found purchase as she yanked a final handful of serpents from her mouth, “but I can still destroy you!” She held aloft a familiar flask.

“Ah no, I believe that is mine,” said Aziraphale with a wave of his hand. “You may keep the contents.”

The tartan Thermos materialized in his hands. The holy water, however, stayed put. It stayed put for at least a fraction of a second, suspended in a tube-like formation before seeming to remember that even in hell gravity was a thing. It splashed down out of the air, over Sonneillon’s hands and arms, down her front. With horrific, guttural gurgle she tumbled forward falling into the pool of it, sizzling and writhing until there was nothing left. 

“Well, that was gruesome.” Aziraphale tucked the flask away in an inner pocket of his coat. “Would you mind if we leave? I am getting a bit warm down here.”

Crowley blinked. 

\--

They stood together on a star. 

Crowley gazed at him, and extended his black wings beyond sight. The expanse of space around them offered a quiet unlike anything else. Vague motions of light and color swirled about, transforming and dancing as they did every second of every day since creation. "One of my favorites."

"Are you alright?" Aziraphale asked. 

"Yeah," he intoned, even as his form trembled in the cold darkness. "Hell isn't anything I haven't seen before."

"You don't need to be brave on my account, you know."

"Yes, I do.... No. No I'm not alright." He sighed. "Out here it's beautiful isn't it?"

"I dare say."

"I suppose. I suppose they'll be after us even more after this," he said. He realized, then and there, in that airless bit of the universe, that they were holding hands. He stared at their hands, unable to determine what to do. Any further discussion caught like a bone in his throat. 

"Come here," Aziraphale said, and drew him into an embrace. Crowley went, feeling Aziraphale's arms wrap around him, feeling a hand nestle his head to his shoulder, fingers running up and into his hair. They hung, suspended-like, in the aura of deep space, wings touching at the tips, holding each other close. With a shaky voice, Aziraphale whispered in his ear, "I don't know if this means anything, coming from me, but I love you." He pulled back and looked into Crowley's ancient, golden, tired eyes. "I love YOU. Every bit of you. Every piece of what you are. I want to be with you, if you would do me the honor." He sniffed. "If... if you will have me as yours."

"Ah," Crowley tried, his mouth open but no words came forth. He tried to work out how letters came together into phonics, how to form sounds from them and string them together in some semblance of understanding, but in the end, he simply couldn't. He pulled Aziraphale close and kissed him, tasted the golden sweetness of him, felt the so-soft welcome of him. It was too much. It was everything. 

"Mmm, is that a yes?"

"I love you," Crowley blurted between a peppering of little closed-mouthed kisses across his face, "I have loved you for ages. I love you. I... I don't know if it means anything coming from a demon but we.. we can feel it. We're just not supposed to show it. One of the punishments. But we feel.” 

They kissed again, in the swirling forever of space, touching each other in a new way, feeling in a way they had never allowed themselves. 

"Oh my fuck, if they discorporate me right now, it'd be worth it. This is perfect, this is how I want to go," Crowley laughed, then tears began to fall from his eyes. 

"Darling, oh my darling," Aziraphale breathed. "No it's not over yet."

"It is."

"No no... wait, listen." He pulled back infinitesimally, giving himself enough room to reach into his pocket. He withdrew a slim folded piece of paper. "Now look, we have a lot we are going to want to discuss. A lot to mull over. And I think I have found a way to do so that should put your mind at ease." He tipped the paper forward, tapping it for Crowley to take. 

"Whu..." said Crowley, finally moving his hand to the paper. "What's this?"

"Just read it."

Crowley didn't want to let go of him, but he pulled back enough to unfold the sheet and start to read. "It's a contract."

"I suppose so."

He read further. "It's a lease."

Aziraphale's grey eyes glittered as he nodded. 

A series of unintelligible noises escaped the demon's mouth as he read on, attempting to comprehend. "You, you want me to move in with you?"

Aziraphale let out a breathy laugh. "Well, rather. Yes. I mean, yes. That is part of it. But this is a contract from Asphodel." He nodded at Crowley, attempting to convey understanding. "The guardian at the house you sent me to? The place of safety? I do believe, with him as our landlord, we can live in a place hidden from the view of both heaven and hell. It's all there. Should be pretty tight but, well, I'll let you be the judge."

Crowley's mouth hung open. He looked from the paper, up to the angel, then back to the contract. "It's... it's got a pet clause."

"Well yes, I guess that's part of the deal. But you see, it's for that lovely place you liked out in the South Downs. Down from Devil's Dyke? I may have worked a few covert miracles to make that part happen, but I thought we should have a place we both liked."

"I see that." Crowley's thumb brushed over the end of the contract. "It. It lookssss air tight. You. You didn't sign it yet."

Aziraphale stated brusquely, "well I was not going to sign without you. That is to say, it is null and void if only one of us were to sign." He swallowed. "We have to choose this... together."

Tears were streaming down the demon's face, and he did nothing to hide them. “I do.” His voice was wrecked. With a wave of his hand and a swipe of his finger, he signed the paper. 

Aziraphale started to sputter gold again at the edges, weeping molten love into the universe. He touched the other spot on the contract, and his angelic seal appeared, efficiently making the contract solid. "There," he sighed. "Done. Now. I do believe we should get a wiggle on. I may have liberated a few deserving souls for heaven so that should keep them busy for a while. I think I will stay on their good side for a bit. At least long enough to get to our new place.”

“Well, for what it's worth, I honestly still don't know if hell even meant for me to be there. I guess we'll see." 

“Would you like to fly?”

“Honestly? I don’t think I have it in me. I'm about spent.”

Aziraphale thought. “Can you do one more transform into a snake? Maybe a little one? Then I can get us home.”

Home. That did sound very 'nice' indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, howev-er, it did die. I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity… I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.
> 
> “Others find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins. Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation... Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.” 
> 
> – The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde.
> 
> ** [ All of Corinthians 13 is worth a read ](http://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bible/NIV/NIV_Bible/1COR+13.html)
> 
> *** [Please see this description](https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-light-that-leapt-out-of-thee-piers.html) from the 14th Century poem _Piers Plowman_ for more information on the title. 
> 
> **** [ "Sunday lunchtimes were a nightmare - we all had to wear sou'westers and asbestos underpants"](https://reddwarf.fandom.com/wiki/Seventh_Day_Advent_Hoppists)
> 
> ****** [Carmina Burana is a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century. They were found in 1803 in a Benedictine monastery and put to music in 1936 by Carl Orff.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna)
> 
> \--  
> I will probably at some point do a long-winded meta on [Tumblr](https://skyfall-good-omens.tumblr.com/) about why I did what I did, what comes next etc. etc. but for now, please revel with me in the fact that they have admitted their love and have a place of safety finally to explore it!!
> 
> P.S. Yes I made Crowley's "Azirpahale Kicks Hell's Arse" playlist - [you can find it here.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnkuL8uOvSlhSsMKL7fycvykFJTVLKBZc) (The song Crowley plays is #2.)
> 
> Bonus:  
> Aziraphale: There is nearly an hour and a half of music here!  
> Crowley: You were a lot more efficient than I expected.  
> Aziraphale: Ride of the Valkyries??  
> Crowley: I mean, how could it not have Ride of the Valkyries?
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


	8. EPILOGUE

Aziraphale tucked a small torpid serpent into his breast pocket. The flaming sword had vanished upon their arrival in space, and he hoped it was someplace safe. Before returning to Earth, however, he did pause to gaze out at the Universe. This expansive place felt like it should be Crowley’s more than his. He could only bear to gaze at its majesty for a moment before it threatened to engulf him.

What he hungered for most of all was a solid wood floor, a nice thick rug, and piles of old books to paw through. The din of humanity, the wafting scent of a cheese-and-onion pie or a strong, spicy, curry, the warmness of a perfect cup of tea or the terroir of a glass Bordeaux. This could stay up here, mysterious, ever-present, beautiful. He would mostly admire it from afar.

“Can’t believe you lied right to Michael’s stupid face,” came a hissy voice from close to his heart. “Check that – can’t believe she bought it.”

“You misjudge the skillfulness of my showmanship. I did play the role of the great Anthony J. Crowley once, and before a very tough crowd!” He lifted gently on that bit of levity. “It wasn’t difficult to believe in what I was postulating. I mean, I have wondered. What if the war has begun, back when Adam turned 11, just not in the way any of us ever thought?”

“So like, the way it was written wasn’t right? Like, the Bible wasn’t supposed to be taken literally? Imagine that.”

They winged forward back toward Earth. “Bit of a _deus ex machina_ , you calling when you did, don’t you think?”

“No _deus_ involved!” spat Crowley. “ _Daemonium ex machina_. You left the damn house.”

“Yes, and about that. How did you know to send me to the Asphodel Meadows? How did I not know of that place? I mean I knew of it, from books and from song, but not that it was an actual locale.”

His pocket was silent for a bit. “3000 B.C.” 

“Three-thousand B.C.! Why did you never share its existence with me?”

“Eh…you know why. Things were different back then. Was working up to it, I was.“

“Well…” he let that go, but then asked, “why didn’t you come with me?”

“I promisssed. Couldn’t chance it.” At Aziraphale’s furrowed brow he continued. “Mmmm. It is a safe spot. A hidden spot. A place of sanctuary. They can’t see it. They can’t find it. They have no jurisdiction over it. There was no way I was going to chance leading them straight to it.”

“Yet you sent me.” 

“I had to do something. I thought if I could keep you safe, I’d have time to think of something.”

“Your plan was, ‘I’ll think if something’? That’s not a plan. And how did you know Asphodel would welcome me?”

“I had to do something, didn’t I?”

“So you sacrificed yourself and flung me to the unknown.”

“Not fully unknown. Asphodel, he knew about us. Er. That is, he saw us at the Ark and recognized us for what we were. And I guess he kind of kept an eye on us. So, I was pretty sure he’d let you in. Plus, the cats help him choose.”

“What?”

“Did you see a cat?”

“Yes. It bit me actually.”

Crowley let out a choked laugh.

“I guess that explains why there is a pet addendum on the rental agreement. I suppose we’ll have some watchers now ourselves. Never mind. We’ll talk later. Rest now. I believe at some point you did promise me you’d tell me everything, and there will be plenty of time for that.” *

-

He landed from a midnight sky, alighting before a winding path and a darkened cottage. It had been ages since he'd flown that far, but the exertion felt good as he tucked his wings away. He walked up to the door and looked around wonderingly. Checking under the mat, he smiled to himself when his hand ticked a key which made a slight ringing sound against the stone. He was sure he didn’t really need a key, but it was quaint that there was one none the less.

“Hey.”

Crowley spoke. He waited for more, then dipped his hand into his pocket and cupped the small creature within. Crowley reformed, and stumbled desperately in the darkness, Aziraphale barely catching his lanky frame from tumbling off the round-edged front steps.

“Woah, hold on dear!” Crowley clung to him. The fragility and strength he displayed pained his heart to behold. He shuffled to the side, fitting the key into the lock and turning it with a gentle click.

The door swung inwards, and they peered inside, neither one wanting to take the first steps. It was empty and dark and cave-cold, but the aura was still inviting. Crowley ran his hand down Aziraphale’s arm. He slid his fingertips to the center of his palm and squeezed. “This for us?”

He said the word ‘us’ so easily. The angel at his side squeezed back and could only nod. They stepped forward, and Aziraphale latched the door shut. With a quiet invocation, he raised the lights. It was just he’d remembered it from, oh ages ago. They’d stayed there separately in the past, Crowley a few times to inspire tales about the formation of the great wide valley which stretched through the Downs and blessing the area with attraction, and later Aziraphale on holiday during the Victorian era. “I’m afraid it’s rather sparse at the moment.”

Much to Aziraphale’s alarm, Crowley sunk to his knees. Aziraphale let out a noise of dismay and followed the demon’s collapse to kneel next to him. Crowley leaned heavily against his sturdy frame, turning his face into Aziraphale's shoulder, shielding his view of the room. Not knowing how else to react, Aziraphale let him. After a time, Crowley mumbled something into his coat.

“What was that?”

Crowley rocked his face back and forth a few times, then looked up at him, his golden eyes shining in the dim light. “It feels... safe.” 

\--

Once upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a cottage. As much as its inhabitants had hoped it was little to look at from the outside (and thus not to be paid any heed by passers-by) they were both somewhat the perfectionists and couldn't help themselves. The front yard was resplendent in an array of textural floral – sharp pointed lilies and iris with leaves like sword tips, fluffy, billowy pampas grass, a variety of cannas and butterfly bush shooting like spears high into the air. Fluffy lambs ear, deadly bell-shaped foxglove, low variegated hostas, and piles and piles of fragrant antique roses. The riot of color gave way to a pebbled path, edged in green, which wound to the front.

The cottage itself was quintessential English countryside – thatched roof and all. A single vine climbed over the door and the windows which somehow seemed to open both in and out at the same time. The door handle was curved in the shape of a “s”. Or possibly, a snake.

Farther back, trees shaded the sides of the building. A gentle drifting willow on one side, a stately oak on the other, and beyond, some temperate grapevines (mostly for show), and what might be a solitary apple tree (or it might be a grove – even when one looked closely, it was hard to tell). A long and wavering stone fence bordered the back garden.

The inhabitants themselves were all but ghosts. They had arrived in the dead of night. Not one of the neighbors had ever seen a moving van. No one had unpacked. Some claimed to have meet “Mr. Fell”, on a walking path or down by the seashore, but few remembered what exactly they had discussed after the fact. More often than not, the movement you saw beyond the garden gate or lazing on the low branches of the trees and worrying the sparrows was the lithe black cat which had moved in at around the same time. It was unapproachable, skittish, feral. Another cat, large and longhaired, was seen peering out of the windows every so often with a slow measured blink. 

If one were to enter the cottage, which very few people had, they would have seen the interior was somewhat larger than expected. It was filled will all manner of ephemera and a rumpled array of decorations, from textured wall hangings to the Asiatic rugs to silver candelabras and curiosities enclosed in bell glass. And everywhere, build into the framework as well as freestanding, were bookshelves filled to overflowing with some of the most decrepitly intriguing volumes ever seen. 

Speaking of volumes, the other resident (and the owner the long, lean, black Bentley which appeared parked out front) could at times be heard swearing loudly at whatever poor vegetables were under-performing in a patch out of sight from onlookers.

“It’s not so much the plants,” Crowley conceded to Aziraphale, who sat in a lawn chair on the patio with a book open across his lap, “it’s the insects! Bloody disgusting things digging into the tomatoes.”

“Come here. Take a break.” He did not return to his book but watched Crowley pluck a red ripe fruit and weigh it heavily in his palm, scrutinizing it from behind a pair of salmon-pink sunglasses. The heat of the afternoon had not yet chased him indoors, and Aziraphale relished the freedom do little more than sip his drink, read his book, and watch his… his… his ineffable partner pitch the tomato like a shot put over the back wall.

“Blerh,” Crowley said, and wiped his hand on his shorts. 

“You did say you would tell me everything, and it’s been some time now. And I must admit I am desperately curious.”

Crowley conjured another chair and kicked back, his long bare legs stretched out across the patio. “Whatdja wanna know?”

Aziraphale leaned forward. “How much am I free to ask?”

Crowley leaned his head to the side and snapped himself a drink. He had not held back from miracles as of late. Seemed always overjoyed to the most frivolous of usage, as if every covert conjuring was a middle finger to everyone. “Sweetheart,” he said, and Aziraphale’s heart surged at the usage of the endearment which had become a relished New Thing. “This is A.M.A.” He amended, “ask me anything.”

Aziraphale settled himself, considering for only a moment before plunging forth.

“When did you know?”

“When did I know what?”

“How you felt. About me.”

The sunglasses he wore did not hide his eyes as much as those he had worn in the past**, and Aziraphale could see him shifting his gaze around the backyard. “Oh. We’re going there then are we. From the beginning. Something. Attraction.”

“The beginning?”

He shrugged. “Right. But also, I knew when you said you’d never speak to me again.”

“What?”

“The bookshop. I loved you when the bookshop burned.”

Aziraphale tipped the ice around in his glass, swallowing hard. “We do have difficulty with this, don’t we?”

“I was ready to give up. You wouldn’t let me.”

"No. You're right." They sat in moody silence until Aziraphale said quietly, “I’m glad you told me. I wish it hadn’t have taken all that it did.”

Crowley nodded once, then said, “I thought you were going to ask me about hell.”

“Would you rather I ask you about hell?”

“Fuck no, but I know you want to.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes in defeat. “Who was that horrible creature that abducted you?”

“Sonneillon. Inquisitor of Hell. It was her duty to ask questions. But, they aren’t questions. They’re traps. It doesn’t matter what she asked, or what you said in response. In the end, that wouldn’t usually make a scrap of difference anyways. I assumed she was operating under higher powers but sounds like she may have been under her own jurisdiction. She always had it in for me – ever since I was given the role of tempting the humans. Lord of the Flies said as much.”

“Was that who did those awful things to your face?”

Crowley nodded. “Was an honor? Maybe?” He downed his drink. “Ahhhh…. it sucked.”

“Yes, well. I agree.” He attempted to pull his mind away from hell, as he was not feeling up to tackling those sorts of issues at the moment, but he had to ask. “Do you… do you want to talk about any of that.”

“Naaaah,” Crowley said, still not meeting his eye. “Not now. But… maybe. Sometime. If that’s ok.”

“Of course.”

“What about you? Did you… see any of those… things. In hell?”

Azirapahale thought about lying. It would be ever so much easier to say no, didn’t see a thing. I didn't see the physical harm they caused to your perfection. Didn't watch as they struck you down again and again. Didn't bear witness to the painful horrors of seeing you suffer. “I saw... enough. Not that I was not well aware of what goes on down there. But I am not sure I was ready for the true nature of it.” 

Crowley’s stance was suddenly back to its old ridged formation, shoulders tight, relaxed posture drawing back as if ready to strike. “If they ever come for us again, I’d…

“Hush now about that,”

“I’d go back for you in a heartbeat. In a minute.”

“Things are different now.”

“It doesn’t…”

“Crowley!” His voice cut like a blade through the air and Crowley’s jaw snapped shut, words dying on his tongue. “Things. Are different now. It’s all been being consumed by goats.”

Crowley's tenseness evaporated like a deflated balloon, and he quizzically asked, “what?”

“It’s a phrase. Since goats nibble things down to the root, being consumed by goats figuratively means something has irreversibly ended.”****

“Ah,” he said, and slouched down again, refilling his glass with a thought and taking a long, languid drink. He set his hand on the table, atop Aziraphale’s. “Did I ever tell you the story of the giant demonic goat that made Devil’s Dyke?”*****

Aziraphale leaned forward and smiled warmly, “please, tell me again.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * This was actually mentioned in [part 1 - Draw Me O'er Your Burning Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22044358/chapters/52611388)
> 
> ** [These. ](https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/gallery/best-sunglasses-mens?image=5ea2c204cbb129000978514c)
> 
> *** Hi! Want to [color a picture of the cottage](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K_ewJ58-cgjSEqnwKTkDTfCWFdZI7e_V/view?usp=sharing)? This was my contribution to the [Nice and Accurate Colouring Zine](https://gocolouringzine.itch.io/a-nice-and-accurate-colouring-zine) which (as of 5/2020) you can purchase at that link!
> 
> Also, here is [an image I did of the cottage](https://skyfall-good-omens.tumblr.com/post/188414962988/crowley-had-his-bentley-aziraphale-had-his-books) for Ink Tober 2019 that inspired the colouring page.
> 
> Aaaand [another one of the back garden. With a lil fic to go wit it.](https://skyfall-good-omens.tumblr.com/post/188508759613/marvelous-night-for-a-moondance-inspired-by)
> 
> **** Seriously. In the Bengali section of the [Once Upon a Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_upon_a_time) wiki entry.
> 
> ***** [The goat is vain to the point of sin.](https://www.routeyou.com/en-gb/location/view/47428261/devil-s-dyke)
> 
> \--  
> Editing for clarity:  
> It-is-ineffable posted about [Ark guy](https://it-is-ineffable.tumblr.com/post/189538446245/my-peeps-i-freaking-love-you-all-you-know) \- this is 100% who I pictured as the 3rd Representative and guardian of Limbo / Purgatory. (By the way, check out their art tag --- FANtastic!) Although my headcanon differs, it does reference specifically [Cheeseandonioncrisps note](https://cheeseanonioncrisps.tumblr.com/post/190041330385/so-in-the-ark-scene-a-lot-of-people-spotted-the). 
> 
> The synchronicity of the GO Fandom is truly mind-boggling. 
> 
> ALSO - i know there are more but at least two [cat omens](https://skyfall-good-omens.tumblr.com/post/615421852302639104/gayforgoodomens-someone-suggested-a-good-omens) / [Good Meowmens](https://thechekhov.tumblr.com/post/190669888464/more-good-meowmens-featuring-the-tragic-tale-of) posts have appeared, giving rise to visual representation of the cats which help watch the cottage.
> 
> Please come [talk to me on Tumblr](https://suvroc.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
